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TREADING THE NARROW 




By R. E. Barrett 




Boston 

THE ROXBURGH PUBLISHING CO. 

Inc. 



f«2 






Copyrighted 1917 

By R. E. BARRETT 

Rights Reserved 



MAY 19 1917 

©CI,A467025 



PREFACE. 
The chapters in this book are not based on 
fiction, they are not drawn from imagination, 
they are not gems that come from cuHure and 
learning, but are gleaned entirely from the 
rugged school of life, and are for the purpose 
of cheering the down-hearted to a realization 
that a good life has its just reward, that 
through continued combat every temptation, 
obstacle and evil will vanish if a strict observ- 
ance of God's law is kept in carefully treading 
in the narrow way. 



Bebtcatton 

To that dear teacher who urged me to gc 
to school when I was past twenty years of 
age, and helped to mold in me the true prin- 
ciples of honor. 

To a fine Judge on the Bench whose many 
fatherly talks to poor unfortunates, whose 
feet had slipped from the narrow way, who 
helped me to obey and respect the law. 

To a splendid intellectual lawyer, one of 
God's clean home men, whose guest I have 
been at many intellectual feasts, to him I owe 
the avoidance of the saloon and learned the 
intrinsic value of sobriety. 

To my two eldest sisters, one sister-in-law, 
and my devoted wife through whom I learned 
the desperate struggle and what it means to 
live clean. 



To a poorly paid self-educated minister to 
whom I am deeply indebted for the first in- 
troduction to my master. 

To these in the major part, and a few 
others, God bless them all, I owe whatever I 
am to them, to these dear people I affection- 
ately dedicate this book. 

R. E. B. 



TREADING THE NARROW 
WAY 



EARLY FOOTSTEPS. 

M M ^ 

Robert Emmet Barrett was the soothing 
and patriotic cognomen my father fastened 
upon me when I first opened my eyes and I 
looked him squarely in the face. I say my 
father named me and I honestly think he did. 
The first two-thirds of the name proves my 
contention and opens the book wide enough 
that the reader has no trouble in discerning 
the nationality of my father. Mother was an 
English woman and I knew it the first time 
she called father "Arry." If mother had had 
her equal rights in naming me, I might have 
been a Gladstone; but somehow or other 
father monopolized mother's half interest 
and she finally became disgusted and told 
him to name me any blooming thing he 



to Treadmg the Narrow Way 

wanted to. If mother could have foreseen 
this savage war across the orient, I believe, 
she would have handled the center name, but 
the way it stands I wouldn't shoulder a gun 
for England and I can't use my undeveloped 
oratory against Ireland, and I am about half 
persuaded to let them settle their own 
troubles. It being no fault of mine that I 
am half Irish and half English, I let it go at 
that and get along with everybody the best 
I can. It's hard to separate the halves from 
the whole, and so, from a perpendicular 
standpoint, I give the Irish the top half and 
the English the bottom half ; I'd rather let the 
English have the running half anyway. 

So far the name Emmett hasn't done me 
much good, I've only used it nine or ten 
times since I had it, thrice at political 
speeches, a couple of Fourth of July 



Treading the Narrow Way ii 

addresses, once on Decoration Day, once at 
a church wrangle, and a few times when I 
was mad. I find it doesn't help me much oit 
bank cheques, they get turned down as 
quickly with the Emmett signed as without 
it. If the name is ever going to do me any 
good I wish it would hurry up and be a pro- 
gressive or I will be compelled to think father 
was impartial and talked mother out of her 
rightful one-half interest. 

After the ordeal of naming me had been 
fairly or unfairly dealt with, I was told I 
was a free born American citizen and some 
day I might be President and have absolute 
dominion over the blue room, where I sup- 
pose the chief executive goes when he has 
the "Blues." I never considered this encour- 
agement very seriously, for, as I have read in 
some almanac, there is only one chance in 



12 Treading the Narrow Way 

eighteen million, the odds are against the 
slim chance and it's sort of a blue skim milk 
proposition or a church raffle affair, and if 
it's the only time that opportunity is going 
to knock at my door I don't think I'll be at 
home, I'll let Wilson do the best he can and 
let some live Republican Progressive have my 
chance. 

If Wilson would only hurry up and get the 
Government to make those loans they've been 
talking so long about and loan it, at about 
four per cent., to citizens like myself, irre- 
spective of names and nationality, and not 
have the principal come due too quickly, but 
in periods, like twenty year franchises, 1 
believe he ought to have a second term; but 
if he doesn't get some loans placed pretty 
soon I don't know what hard working men 
like myself are going to do. 



Treading the Narrow Way 13 

The only thing I ask Wilson to be careful 
about when he loans the money is the rate. 
I don't want to see the rate on loans as high 
as it was during Qeveland's second adminis- 
tration. 

I borrowed eighteen dollars in 1894 to set- 
tle up a partnership farming deal with a 
Methodist preacher. It seems that outside of 
the banks no one had any money, and you 
had to call on the gentleman banker, get 
down on your knees and have tears as large 
as pullet eggs rolling down your hollow 
cheeks, if you succeeded in your desires. 
Somehow the bankers knew they had a good 
thing; they not only got the fat and tallow 
but they stripped you clear to the bone. 

The eighteen dollar note was dated August 
28, 1894, and read in part; "With interest at 
the rate of ten per cent per annum" ; and from 



14 Treading the Narrow Way 

here on comes the craftiness of the banker: 
He interlined thus: "From January i8, 1894, 
if not paid when due". On October 23rd the 
same year I paid ten dollars on the note; 
September the nth, 1895, six dollars; and 
December the 5th, 1895 the final payment and 
accrued interest was eight dollars and twenty- 
five cents, making a total of twenty- four dol- 
lars and twenty-five cents on a loan of eight- 
een dollars for one year, three months and 
seven days. What was the rate of interest 
charged? That banker is retired and worth 
a hundred thousand dollars; hadn't he ought 
to be? 

To borrow money under that rate you 
needed the health of a bear, a cataract of 
energy, a colossal mind, unlimited self- 
respect, boundless self-confidence, all impreg- 
nated with an iron honesty. That kind of 



Treading the Narrow Way 15 

interest makes me feel like the investor, who 
bought some unseen land from an honest real 
estate man, and, when he went to look at his 
property he found it submerged in water. 
The real estate man told him it could be irri- 
gated, but he had no idea it was susceptible 
of such profuse moisture. After he gazed 
at it a while he said "Instead of buying this 
land by the acre I should have bought it by 
the quart." He probably has an unrecorded 
deed, I have the paid note in my possession, 
I feel proud I got it paid ; but my pride halted 
suddenly when I got it paid and in all these 
years it hasn't advanced much for men who 
can take a nickle and make it into a dollar so 
aW fired Quick. Some time I'll frame that 
note with a glass on both sides of it. 

Coming back to the early events. I was 
born beneath the shadows of the Rocky 



1 6 Treading the Nwrow Way 

Mountains where the placid and sleepy Platte 
wound leisurely through the broad meadows 
and sleeping undeveloped valleys and had 
abundance of God's elixir before the day of 
the great reclamation projects that sapped 
its mountain waters. 

Because I mention the Platte here, don't 
get me mixed with that other fellow that has 
made the Platte famous and was until re- 
cently holding a cabinet position on an un- 
derpaid salary, he's no relation of mine and 
I never knew him until he ran for President. 
He did the opposite from what I did and took 
that one slim chance, made three strikes and 
fanned ; I'm glad I let it alone. 

When I was six years old and my parents 
still said what I should do they took Horace 
Greeley's advice and went a hundred and six 
miles farther west. At their destination there 



Treading the Narrow Way ij 

was no buildings except the section house, 
depot and a little building that sheltered the 
hand car. The entire population was not over 
a baker's dozen. I don't believe there was 
a quieter place on God's footstool. 

One good thing about those days was the 
taxes; I think a week's compensation on the 
railroad would pay the taxes, County, State 
and Municipal from 1887 to 1890. How we 
have progressed in taxes since then! Espe- 
cially Colorado. 

In this little dreary place where I had no 
associations to lead me astray I took account 
of my surroundings. I was away out there 
on the barren plains where the grass curled 
and burned under the blazing sun, where 
foliage was scant, where the lonely cactus 
and prickly pear awaited the step of man to 
imbed itself and cause more pain, no trees 



i8 Treading the Narrow Way 

or flowers to whisper words of encourage- 
ment, no cheerful forest or shady dells, noth- 
ing at all to cause the deeper emotions of a 
queer nature to assert themselves. Nothing 
but the broad miraged prairie stretching as 
far as the eye could see. 

No cooling breeze to alleviate the pain on 
a youthful face or the faces of those careworn 
early pioneers who blazed the way for future 
generations, who would erect homes, till the 
soil, plant trees, and endeavor to further 
promote civilization, until succeeding gener- 
ations would reap the pleasure and peace that 
was purchased through these sacrifices and 
hardships of their forefathers. We owe to 
the pioneers such a vast debt of gratitude 
that we never can pay the the principal with 
no interest attached, and it's a different kind 
of interest than four per cent a month. 



Treading the Narrow Way 19 

After I had grown to manhood and my lot 
had been cast in other places it was over 
fourteen years before I saw much of the old 
scenes, but when returning to the old places 
I noticed great changes. The town had 
grown; few of the old places were left and 
the old haunts and nooks were hard to find. 

A dreary and quiet sadness steals over one 
when looking at his boyhood and manhood 
earliest recollections, and as I glanced at the 
old scenes I stood and looked longingly, 
earnestly and lovingly at the old familiar 
places. There was the locust grove I helped 
to plant two decades ago; there was the little 
stream after which the town was named: 
there was the old pump which so many times 
quenched my thirst; there was the exact spot 
where dearie said the joyful word ; there was 
the old house where our first baby was born; 



20 Treading the Narrow Way 

there was the farm patch I used to plow, 
and the meadow where I pitched the hay. 
All seemed different and as the pathos of the 
change surged in my breast I walked away 
longing for something I couldn't get, and 
would never get again. 



GETTING THE BACKBONE. 

^ M ^ 

About the year 1889 when I was seventeen 
years old I commenced on the lowest rung 
on the railroad ladder and went to work on 
the section. I was frail physically, and must 
have been the same mentally, for I never got 
beyond the third rung. I worked in the days 
when you spoke for the spring job the pre- 
ceding fall, and then often your application 
met failure. In hard times when jobs are 
few the fellow that has them is blessed with 
unusual longevity, and whenever some one 
did pass beyond, his demise was railroad talk 
for a long time. 

When you consider that all through the 
central west, which had a few years earlier 



22 Treading the Narrow Way 

been homesteaded after several repeated crop 
failures, almost the entire population were 
looking for employment and the only cash job 
in the country was a section job, you can 
realize how desirable and prized a position 
it was. 

I don't remember how it came that my 
application was slumbering all through the 
cold winter with a large number of those 
half -starved homesteaders who hadn't raised 
anything for so many years, received recogni- 
tion in the spring ; but it did and I got one of 
the plums. 

The first time I pumped a hand-car I fully 
realized the Lord had made no mistake by 
taking out one of the ribs and leaving the 
backbone whole. If you ever pumped a hand- 
car I will pass from this painful mode of 
travel and let you refresh your own memory 
and backache. 



Treading the Narrow Way 23 

I got along pretty well, when the "Boss*' 
wasn't nervous that the road master would 
come along and want to borrow another fifty 
dollars on his word without interest, every- 
thing went nicely. When weed cutting time, 
came I gritted my teeth, held my back as 
straight as I could and whacked away. Be- 
sides the excruciating pain in the back that 
made you feel like you would like to give 
one long piercing yell, throw your shovel 
away and run for town, there was the addi- 
tional pain of seeing the "Boss" sitting on 
the hand car resting his back. He had the 
advantage and the authority! I must keep 
at it and cut the weeds or the wheels of the 
locomotive would slip, the traveler couldn't 
resume his journey, all traffic would stop, and 
down would go the railroad stock and let 
out all the water. 



24 Treading the Narrow Way 

It would have been a blessing if the water 
could have been spilled by some patent 
process where the weeds were to be cut, but, 
monopolies monopolize and if the Lord didn't 
see fit to have the rain fall in September in- 
stead of June no one was to blame, except 
Grover Cleveland. The Republicans said the 
country always went to the dogs and dried 
up when the Democrats elected a President. 
I was too young then to know much about 
statesmanship and I wouldn't want to say for 
repetition whether or not the Lord and Cleve- 
land were working together or otherwise, but 
I do remember some one was mighty stingy 
with the moisture. 

If you, my dear reader, have never had the 
privilege of cutting weeds for a dollar and 
thirty-five cents per day for three weeks in 
succession then, for all that's good and beau- 



Treading the Narrow Way 25 

tiful, take my advice and let the Jap, Greek, 
or Italian have your place and do the mowing. 
Either of them can get better wages and any 
of these dark-skinned brethren will do as 
much in three days as the white man would 
in one day and cause the pale face no extra 
exertion. 

The pain in the back caused from close 
association with a shovel from seven o'clock 
to twelve o'clock and from one o'clock to 
six even now, over twenty years afterwards, 
almost makes me break down and give vent 
to my feelings in a more noticeable manner 
than my friend Taft when he was informed 
that he had carried Utah, If you have ever 
been tortured with lumbago, you have a slight 
knowledge of what races up and down the 
back of a weed cutter. When he bends down 
he can't get up and when he gets up he can't 



26 Treading the Narrow Way 

get down. There you are! Humiliated, suf- 
fering and mad, knife blade sticking you 
whenever you move, but you must or bust. 
You are a free born American citizen but 
you must lose sight of the special endowment 
when you are cutting weeds. The constitu- 
tion may be back of you, but just at present 
you have got to get back of your own con- 
stitution and a **darn" good one too, or 
you've lost your job and that dearly beloved 
stipend of thirteen and one-half cents an hour. 
Being on the low rung of the railroad lad- 
der is the same as in all other departments, 
the man at the bottom gets the low wages, 
needs the good back and carries the heavy 
burden. He don't need much brain; he is 
told what to do; how to do it and when. 
He's told when to go to work and when to 
quit. Brains would be a nuisance and, if he 



Treading the Narrow Way 2y 

had any, he wouldn't be working on the sec- 
tion. Time has proved that, and the Dago 
takes his place. 

What became of the Irish, Swede, German 
and Bohemian section men of twenty-five 
years ago is more than I know. Extempore, 
an increase of brains did something for him 
and you don't find him tramping ties with 
the Dago. But the man at the low rung 
hasn't much choice; he can work or quit. 
His job is always in jeopardy as he couldn't 
save enough in a year to loan out an occa- 
sional "fifty" to smooth the feelings of an 
over auspicious road-master. He's at the 
bottom and whatever falls goes down to him 
and in an undignified way he must carry the 
whole load, for it can not go lower. The 
general manager can ease his feelings on the 
superintendent, and he on the road-master 



28 Treading the Narrow Way 

and the road-master can growl at the section 
foreman, but when the section foreman dumps 
the whole putrid, half-boiled mess on the un- 
learned day laborer you can see the urgent 
necessity of a fine piece of choice workman- 
ship in the middle of the back. You seldom 
see a man with a front like a wash-tub turned 
edgewise working on the railroad. There is 
no room for him! You must be able to see 
your feet if you cut weeds, and have a stom- 
ach that can say "Hello" to the backbone at 
nine fifteen A. M. 

When the winds used to tear loose from 
the nasty bad lands of South Dakota and 
come tearing over the semi-arid plains for 
three days in succession at a velocity of sixty 
miles an hour it seems the Lord could have 
improved on man by giving him a gizard to 
grind up the accumulated gravel that had 
been beaten into his daily bread. It came 



Treading the Narrow Way 29 

pretty near taking the hide off from me to 
keep pace with those hungry homesteaders 
who were afraid of losing their jobs and 
existence, 

I am glad that I had the backbone. The 
term is applicable in two ways. One is the 
acquisition of a resilient mechanism in the 
center of your back, starting at the base of 
your brain and running down to a certain 
point or as far as is necessary, and the other 
is a priceless stamina, determination and a 
square deal. I am not sorry that I acquired 
some on the railroad ; its a good thing to have 
in the every day affairs of life. 

I hardened my backbone when I worked 
on the steel gang a few years afterwards, and, 
if there is such a thing as a steel backbone. I 
claim some right to its possession through 
low remuneration and dirty cabbage. Keen 
retrenchment policies make better satis^ed 



30 Treading the Narrow Way 

stockholders and also make wages that would 
embarrass a bumble bee if he were buying a 
pair of leggings and expected to pay for them. 

It takes unlimited backbone for a congress- 
man to vote "Yes" on the prohibition amend- 
ment and turn down the easy money of the 
brewers. It takes backbone for a president 
to cast custom aside and step into the halls 
of congress and demand that the party 
pledges be kept. It takes a better backbone 
to enter the same halls and take a determined 
stand on a cause that means better citizenship. 
It takes backbone if the minister ousts the 
liberal paying hypocrite who is helping to kill 
the church with his pocketbook. 

It takes backbone every day you live and 
if you don't use it in the way it was intended 
you can't tread the narrow path and expect 
to slip into heaven without being recognized. 
You may do it on earth but you must not try 



Treading the Narrow Way 31 

it where you are known. It takes backbone 
to be a Christian, the earnest conscientious 
kind, that can lay all jealousy aside, all 
prejudice and hatred and give the offender a 
square Christian deal. Unless you can do 
these things you CAN'T be a Christian, the 
kind that Jesus told us to be. The other kind 
is a sham and an out-and-out sinner is far 
better. True Christianity will not allow one 
individual to do another of the slightest 
wrong. The conscience of a real Christian 
will not allow any ill feeling or the harboring 
of malice. You know it's wrong, your con- 
science reminds you of the wrong and unless 
you remove that kind of Christianity you can 
never receive the fruits that come from the 
narrow way and be a successful Christian. 
You know yourself if you are a sham so 
why try to fool anybody and carry a false 
label. 



THE TWO PATHS. 

M M lOi 

Don*t forget the warning of the Saviour 
when he says : "Enter ye in by the narrow 
gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the 
way that leadeth to destruction, and many 
are they that enter thereby. For narrow is 
the gate and straitened is the way that lead- 
eth unto life, and few are they that find it" 
Travel the path that becomes shining gold, 
the one that grows lovelier, the one where 
you are never alone: You'll need the friend 
of this path when the heartaches and trials 
are hard to bear. Don't chance the other p?ith 
and sell your soul for pleasure, wealth and 
damnation. 

The journey of life, be it one of success or 



Treading the Narrow Way 33 

failure, closely resembles two paths. When 
we reach the age of accountability we must 
of our own volition choose one of these paths. 
Where the paths commence to fork out and 
go in separate directions we see a sign spread 
clear across the entrance and it says: "I am 
the way, the truth and the light." We study 
this for a long time and then go to the other 
side and on the same sign board it says: 
"Though your sins were as crimson they shall 
be whiter than snow." We are young, full 
of life and can't really understand what it 
means but we are ready to start on life's path- 
way and there are only two paths to choose 
from. 

We look around and see the broad, open 
path with no restrictions, filled with the aroma 
of choice flowers, we meet social companions,, 
have gay parties, they tell us of the pleasures 



34 Treading the Narrow Way 

they are enjoying. From this survey and 
study we note that the broad path looks 
cheerful and inviting, the narrow one seems 
straight ahead as far as we can see. 

We can notice that the crowd seems to b<' 
going the broad way. People in all conditions 
of life, well dressed, prosperous looking peo- 
ple of wealth and affluence, and the ordinary 
working people in their customary garb. 
They look happy and contented, and we de- 
cide to take the broad way. 

We didn't notice, until after the start, that 
the course has a descending grade and we 
get a long distance on the way before we call 
a halt. We have seen a great many things 
that are not elevating and we conclude that 
afte r we go a short distance we'll turn back, 
start over and take the other path, and 



Treading the Narrow Way 35 

though the things that looked so inviting at 
the beginning are losing their attractiveness. 

The demoralizing things we see are pitiful. 
There is a poor fellow reeling with drunken- 
ness. MY! hear that vulgar, profane lan- 
guage coming from the foul mouth of that 
young man. There's a party drinking wine, 
laughing boisterously and telling stories that 
are very improper for ladies and gentlemen. 
There is a poor girl in a calico dress that 
seems to be alone ; her face looks sad and 
she seems to be watching and waiting for 
someone. There is a pitiful story in her once 
pretty face that would cause you to weep if 
you knew it. 

Look at that old man with a gray beard ; 
he has been a powerful man in his day, his 
well built physique tells that. He's a man of 
more than ordinary intelligence, his feature? 



36 Treading the Narrow Way 

show fine breeding. He must have got on the 
wrong path from not noticing the sign board, 
he seems out of place here. I thought so. 
He is turning back! My! how he stoops as 
he commences the ascent. But he is sticking 
to it. There he is telHng a younger man of 
the mistake he made and is trying to persuade 
him to accompany him back. Well, isn't 
that splendid! They're both going back. It 
must have been that last remark that the elder 
man said to the younger man that persuaded 
him. ''Lo, I am with you always even unto 
the end of the world." 

There is a whole crowd about to start back ; 
are they going? No, they listen to that well 
dressed fellow over there smoking a ciga- 
rette, and holding up that beer bottle and he 
has influenced them to go a little further. It 
must have been that last remark he made 



Treading the Narrozv Way 37 

when he told him there was going to be a 
beer drink and a free dance at Switzers that 
persuaded them. 

They go on and on; they are commencing 
to look ragged and worn out; the roses have 
flown from their cheeks; their eyes are no 
more full of lustre and keenness; the gray 
hairs are showing, the step is not so firm, but 
still they go on. Now they are old, they have 
lived so fast and reckless that they haven t 
hardly got the strength nor the inclination lo 
start to climb that long hill that took fort\ 
years of the best part of their lives to de- 
scend. It seems an impossibility and they 
do not desire to consider it. 

Look at that poor woman over there. 
Listen to the poor soul as she is down on her 
knees and the tears are falling like summer 
rain. Listen to her broken, sobbing words 



38 Treading the Narrow Way 

My, isn't she the most pitiful, dejected and 
forlorn looking creature you ever saw! Hear 
her as she sobs "Lord, I saw the sign but oh 
I was so foolish, I didn't heed it but I re- 
member it and dear Lord hear me, I'm old, 
feeble and poor, I am friendless and I have 
sinned and broken Thy laws. Oh take me 
as I am. Amen." 

Who is there beside the blessed Jesus that 
can pick up this poor unfortunate daughter 
as she now stands before the bar of sorrow 
and despair awaiting her dues? She was 
given and entrusted with a pure and innocent 
life in infancy but she was frivolous and 
sought after wealth, power, position and the 
many other transitory and fleeting things. 
She took her clean, innocent life and so soiled 
and stained it that it would be unrecogniz- 
able to any one but he who gave it, and now. 



Treading the Narrow Way 39 

when it is filled with barrenness, she comes 
to her maker with her wasted life, when in all 
candor and sense of fairness she could expect 
nothing in return, but he says to her 'Though 
your sins were as crimson they shall be whiter 
than snow." 

Then we see the other path that was trod 
by the bleeding feet of the lowly Nazarene. 
We know the anguish and pain he suffered; 
we think of the fiendish death he died that 
he might say to a sinful people ; ''Come unto 
me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and 
I will give you rest." 

This narrow and straight path may not be 
so beautiful at the beginning as the broader 
one. We think if we follow it all joys and 
pleasures are gone. But what a mistake, for 
each day that we travel, it becomes prettier, 
the flowers are sweeter, the trees are greener, 



40 Treading the Narrow Way 

the skies seem bluer. We find temptations 
and trials but we have some one to lean on, 
and there is a sweet peace and enjoyment 
known only to his followers. It makes it easy 
to pass the saloon and enter the church. The 
Lord is in that little church and his servant 
there knows every man, woman and child for 
miles around. See them cluster around him; 
he loves them; each day he lives he does 
some one a kindness. He listens to your 
sorrows and heartaches; his joys are your 
joys and never a word or thought but one of 
goodness and kindness has he for anybody. 
He looks tired today; he spent an all night's 
vigil at the bedside of a sick friend. Did 
you see him when he stopped and caressed 
that little girl who had broken her doll? It 
meant something to her and he has won her 
everlasting gratitude. See him talking to 



Treading the Narrow Way 41 

that young fellow over there who is waver- 
ing and unable to decide which path to take. 
Notice his warm and friendly attitude and 
see, he has won his confidence and has got a 
promise from him. See that sweet-faced, 
light-hearted maiden, he has just come from 
her home and she has consented to lead a 
better life. 

Look there, will you! He is helping up 
that poor man whose feet slipped from the 
narrow way and he is taking him home to 
the brokenhearted wife. See the sadness on 
his dear old face as he gives what comfort 
he can to the poor woman; he's back again 
the next day and is talking to them both. 
"Yes," they said from now on they'd cling 
close to the marriage vows. Don't they all 
look happy and pleased. There he is again 
talking to a poor man who has been unsuc- 



42 Treading the Narrow Way 

cessful, he worked hard, lived pure but went 
too heavily in debt and can't meet his obliga- 
tions. Worry is making him sorrowful and 
shortening his days, but the dear pastor with 
his hand on his shoulder and his warm words 
of sympathy has a telling effect and the 
heavy clouds are leaving his countenance and 
as they part, each understands the other. 
The cordial, glowing hand-shake is given and 
both have received good. There he goes 
again; he's just married a young couple and 
is advising them, he is telling them not to be 
down cast when a snag comes along but to 
work together, tread the narrow way, keep 
faith in God, and He will bless and prosper 
them. 

There is pain in his heart today; he has 
just come from the home of broken-hearted 
parents who have laid away in the silent citf 



Treading the Narrow Way 43 

their first born. In his great love for them 
he has told them about Jesus, the sorrowful 
life he lived, the great pains and heartaches 
he endured, and he did it all for them. As 
he leaves they love him as a father and a 
sweet peace has descended upon them and 
the wound commences to heal. 

And so it goes, day after day, 

He's telling some one of God's narrow way; 

He's planting some flowers where flowers 

should be; 
He's smoothing the path from dull misery; 
Here a kind word, there a good deed, 
He's doing his best to meet every need. 

The greatest need in keeping in the nar- 
row way is in sincere and earnest prayer ac- 
companied by a tenacious faith, is the only 



44 Treading the Narrow Way 

source that leads to the full and sweet com- 
panionship of the blessed Jesus. The every 
near realization, what God can accomplish 
for us fulfills the truth that the ever listening 
ear of a just and righteous master has ample 
succor for a burdened and heavy heart. 
Faith without something to justify its estab- 
lishment, though it be ever so great, is in real- 
ity groundless and contains no true merit, but 
honest prayer for honest motives and coming 
from a desirous heart is the great medium 
through which sinful mankind, so prone to 
err, is brought into a close relationship with 
a wise and prudent God, a God who willingly 
compensates every effort whose basis is a 
true and unselfish heart. 

Trust God fully at all times and pray with 
such sincere, fervent and unselfish motives 
as is only needed to replenish a pure and un- 



Treadmg the Narrow Way 45 

spotless desire. When prayer is answered, as 
God sees fit to answer, we can discern its 
force and effect in our hearts from the 
knowledge and fact that a change has taken 
place and a deep feeling of keen satisfac- 
tion has fully satisfied a craving want. If 
this were not so the prayer alone without 
any manifestation from a true and living 
God, would be worthless. A long composi- 
tion of nicely polished words spoken to an 
idol could in no wise be called a prayer. 
The densest mind could surely realize that no 
sympathy lies in anything not able to com- 
prehend a feeling. Silence would be better 
and is more valuable. It is better to keep 
still than to say somthing that would cause 
some one to err or stumble. 



GOD'S INTENTION MAN'S 
PREVENTION. 

^ ^ ^ 

God's handiwork and its beauty is manifest 
wherever the eye rests. The towering moun- 
tain peaks, the great boulders, the babbling 
brooks, the peaceful valleys, the green grass, 
the beautiful flowers, the shady dells, all 
speak of his master hand. The moon-beams 
playing on the still waters, the sunshine 
streaming through the golden clouds, the per- 
fect poise and artistic shape of the trees 
growing on the mountain side among the 
jagged rocks where the hand of man never 
trained or cultivated them. There they stand 
as sentinels waving to and fro by the gentle 
breezes and tell of His wonderful works. 



Treading the Narrozv Way 47 

The wild flowers growing side by side in the 
shady dell, each a different color, whisper His 
wonderful plan. The little brook dancing and 
playing in and out among the deep chasms 
chiseling its narrow passage among the 
granite, jumping over big rocks, rolling little 
pebbles, it steals here and there until it 
spreads out on the great plains and fertile 
prairies into a rushing river hurrying on its 
way to the ocean. The beautiful sun-set cast- 
ing its long stream of golden beauty over the 
western sky mocks at the skilful artist when 
he tries to imitate its marvelous shades and 
tints. The moon breaking through the silvery 
clouds and showering the heavens with beauty 
and grandeur rests its glory on the evening 
dew, and the millions of diamonds glitter and 
glisten in a splendor and elegance far beyond 
the hand of man. The many stars hanging 



48 Treading the Narrow Way 

like precious gems upon a great pedestal 
twinkling and sparkling tell the same story of 
His wonderful handiwork. 

God was not satisfied with all these mar- 
velous things and, though they are perfect, 
good and beautiful He must surpass them. 
He must have a crowning effort to all their 
glory. So to defy imitation He brought forth 
His masterpiece and called it man. The in- 
comparable and unsurpassable, the grandest 
achievement of his architecture. In his wis- 
dom He provided everything for his needs 
and comfort. Sunshine to warm him, dark- 
ness to rest him, trees to shade him, give him 
fuel and shelter, birds of song to cheer when 
weary with labor, flowers to beautify, soil to 
produce whatever he sowed, rain and sun- 
shine to mature it, meats of all kind to nour- 
ish him, fruits, fishes, grains, honey, milk 



Treading the Narrow Way 49 

and everything necessary for his growth and 
sustenance, He made him pure, clean, strong, 
and beautiful, just a little bit lower than the 
angels. He furnished man everything to 
start with. It was no disgrace if his hands 
were blistered and dirty if they were stained 
by honest toil, he fought hardships and pri- 
vations, he was the hardy pioneer blazing his 
way for home and country, raising his chil- 
dren near to nature's heart and cleanliness. 
He gave to posterity strong, hearty, rugged 
men and women, he lived honorably, his la- 
bor was rewarded and he died ripe in years 
as a fitting tribute to his great achievements. 

Time rolled on! Years became centuries! 
Methods changed and the great plan of God 
was lost. 

Greed, avarice and monopoly commenced 
to steal the bread from the infant's mouth; 



50 Treading the Narrow Way 

the keen and bitter struggle for existence is 
in full sway ; the great land of liberty and op- 
portunity no longer can put forth her boast 
and call and call for him to come, build 
homes, prosper, live well and accumulate. 

What changeful conditions today from 
then! We boast of our great enlightenment 
and yet we are like the drowsy cat under 
centuries of domestication. As soon as the 
raw meat is put before us all the centuries' 
training is cast aside and we are ready to do 
acts of barbarians. Instead of being able to 
arbitrate and handle all questions of war 
through peace tribunals we cast aside the 
brotherly teachings of the great book, in- 
crease the standing army, build more war- 
ships, enlarge the navy, and be ready for 
war, ready to shoot our brother, ready to de- 
stroy his home, leave his children penniless 



Treading the Narrow Way 51 

and fatherless, a widow to struggle and 
mourn, posterity to be enfeebled, a gigantic 
debt to stagger many generations unborn, a 
country bankrupt and all teachings of love 
and better citizenship disgraced. 

No wonder our people are discouraged and 
feel we are slipping away from the preamble 
of our great Constitution! If this age and 
this country can not handle all questions, na- 
tional and international, and extend the full- 
est measure of brotherly love where peace is 
needed; what age or country can? 

I think it may be America that will be 
called upon to lead other nations and have 
them cast aside their war preparations and 
prepare for peace. In every crisis through 
which this country has passed we have been 
fortunate, thank God, that the right man has 
always been found. We have had our Wash- 



52 Treading the Narrow Way 

ingtons, Lincolns, Websters, McKinleys, 
Wilsons, and hundreds of others and in every 
instance when some great problem has had to 
be solved, either in this country or abroad, in 
either science, statesmanship, literature or 
art, no matter how perplexing, difficult or in- 
tricate, American brains and ingenuity, in the 
vernacular of the day, has brought home the 
bacon, Swift's premium, if you please! 

I have always felt deeply sorrowful for 
the man who studies long and ardently with 
a bowed head resting upon his hands. His 
whole soul seems to be calling for the fine 
sympathies that can only be rendered from 
the loving teachings of the Nazarene. He is 
calling for the tender affection that is keenly 
necessary to right him just before that sullen 
burning wave of despondency casts him into 
utter gloom and sorrow. O Christianity! 



Treading the Narrow Way 53 

Christianity! amid wealth, society, culture, 
influence, peace, advancement, laws, legisla- 
tors, and boasted liberty where art thou? 

Visit the parks of any cities, towns or 
small villages and you can find sitting on the 
benches man after man who is unable to 
solve the problem of an honest existence. 
There he is, honest, clean, and worthy of 
good citizenship, unable to find labor that 
will keep him an honor to society. What will 
become of him in this land of boasted oppor- 
tunity and liberty? Plenty for all; but mo- 
nopolized and organized until the laboring 
man is almost ostracized. Look at his coun- 
tenance, clear cut, manly and open, haggard, 
yes, but from what ? From worry, loss of 
sleep, lack of food, responsibility of a family 
without funds, etc. But withal you find no 
look of dissipation, no odor of liquor, no foul 



54 Treading the Narrow Way 

language, and still with all these excellent 
qualities of meritorious citizenship he is 
sinking. How long will he stand it? 

Were you ever in a condition of this kind 
when any way you turned you were outfig- 
ured. How long can a man have a thorn like 
this continually getting deeper and deeper 
into his flesh before he will mke a grasp for 
it, and endeavor to release the pain? Where 
is the cause? What is wrong with our wide 
heralded economic system? This condition 
being true of the man with a family how 
alarming to the young man of today without 
a family? Show me any incentive or induce- 
ment for the common ordinary man of today 
without funds to cause him to establish a 
home and rear a family under the grand old 
Stars and Stripes, and I'll show you a man 
that loses worse than a bankrupt in the finer 
sense of the word. 



Treading the Narrow Way 55 

Without the establishment of homes this 
nation can not stand. No matter how frugal 
a man is, no matter how economical his hab- 
its you can give him the most promising part 
and he can not marry and rear a family be- 
cause at every angle he is beaten. What is 
he going to do? Free land is almost gone, 
food stuffs are high, all his needs are expen- 
sive; how can be make it? Every line he 
wishes to enter is crowded! Reason for 
yourself and see if this is not true. 

When you talk of large families, who raises 
them but the poor people and this will soon 
be eliminated. If the poor man raises one 
child he is doing more than his duty to so- 
ciety than the rich man. The expense is such 
a night-mare and horror to a common, or- 
dinary and honest man to provide the neces- 
saries of life for his family that I sometimes 



56 Treading the Narrow Way 

shudder and feel sorry that I caused children 
to be born, fought for a home, paid my debts, 
and lived clean. I wouldn't want to do it 
again for my country, and I love her as I do 
the man of Galilee. 

I fear America is no longer another word 
for opportunity as was said by the beloved 
Emerson, unless she helps him to establish 
homes on the public domain by loaning him 
money at a low rate on long time periods and 
keep him at work and help him along and not 
foreclose when he is doing his best to win. 
He'll win, give him a chance. 

What Emerson said may have been true at 
an earlier period it was so intended, but the 
plan was lost sight of and the great greed for 
wealth was accomplished to the detriment of 
the majority who have been obliged to make 
their living with their hands. It is a sad fact 



Treading the Narrow Way 57 

but true that there is a revolution slowly 
kindling in the breasts of the laboring class 
of people against capital; God grant that in 
some way the fire can be put out. 

I have sometimes thought what's the use 
of living. The sorrows and pains outnumber 
the joys by a large margin. You slip down 
the hill of pleasure without any exertion, but 
to climb the mountain of morality is a gi- 
gantic task, for every step is a struggle, and 
after you have fought and won nine-tenths 
of the journey one misstep and you slip to 
the bottom and the whole climb is before you 
again. It's fight, fight all the time, continu- 
ally and forever! It robs you of nature's 
rest, steals away your ambition, stirs up ha- 
tred towards those in easy circumstances and 
causes conditions of unrest and strife. 

Is life worth the gigantic struggle to over- 



58 Treading the Narrow Way 

come the perplexing difficulties and endeavor 
to live honest and clean and not slip down 
the path of despair where the great majority 
seem to be going. I say it is ! *Tor, what do 
you profit if you gain the whole world and 
lose your own soul." 

Let your mind ponder over the story of 
Lazarus picking up the crumbs from the 
rich man*s table and you must conclude the 
starving beggar gained uncomparable joy 
and satisfaction to the rich man's torment 
when the two men's lives were carefully 
weighed on the scales where God predomi- 
nates and not the sugar trust. It pays! It 
pays in a thousand diflferent ways! 

There is something to a man that lives an 
upright life in the church and in the world. 
He is a valued asset to any community, he 
may be poor but he has character, and this is 



Treading the Narrow Way 59 

something money can not buy. It takes a 
good life to make a man. A fellow that is 
rich and lives solely for the pleasure of his 
money is not a man. 

One time I mused thus: If it could be so, 
just for the shortest duration of time, while 
temptation was the strongest and the fierce 
conflict was raging, if I could be blind, abso- 
lutely blind till the strong temptation had 
passed and then let me see again and have 
my first sight catch the last glimpse of the 
golden sun as it dipped behind the western 
horizon, leaving behind a long stream of 
golden beauty stretching out in its grandeur 
to kiss the evening sky; even if a scene like 
this could erase the temptation and the blind- 
ness prevail during the surging of the con- 
flict, how could my faith be increased by not 
having the moral courage and strength of 



6o Treading the Narrow Way 

character to withstand the evil? It^s the 
casting aside of temptation by the sheer 
strength of the will power that makes the 
struggle easier, the way grow brighter, and 
the victories grander. If God would allow 
such a condition once, we, in our weakness, 
might ask again and again and instead of 
growing stronger we would grow weaker. It 
is the heroic fighter who has won his laurels 
when the bullets of evil whizzed all around 
him that you like to go up to and pin the 
medal on. 



THE SADNESS BEHIND THE 
VALE. 



A life of self-denial and sacrifice is the 
grandest object the sun shines on. There is 
nothing under the azure skies of heaven so 
worthy of true merit as the pure, unspotted 
and unselfish heart of a sacrificing mother. 
How my heart aches for the poor, worn and 
tired mother whose whole life is confined in 
four walls with three or four children, laying 
claim to her entire time and attention. You 
do not find these kind of women saturated 
with society ; they are not fanatics on woman 
suffrage nor are they riding through the 
streets in a limousine with a good-for-nothing 
yellow-nosed pup sitting beside them. In com- 
mon decency how can any woman with any 
affection or mother love center it upon such 



62 Treading the Narrow Way 

an object as a despicable, worthless pug-nosed 
cur. If it was a dog like a Shepherd, St. 
Bernard, Newfoundland, and many others, 
there would be a little better taste shown, 
but when it is confined solely to the mongrel 
whelps and Teddy bears I think it is high 
time to pick up the Bible and read the thirty- 
second chapter of Isaiah from the first to the 
twelfth verse inclusive. Lord, but it is pitiful 
to see such things committed when there are 
thousands and thousands of poor little home- 
less girls and boys starving to death for 
some one to love them, give them a home and 
then see a poodle woman and her poodle dog 
go rushing by. 

For a long number of years I have had the 
pleasure of being acquainted with one of 
God's self-denial mothers. If this earth con- 
tains anything sweeter and the next world 
anything better the mind of man so far hasn't 
been able to conceive it nor the Bible to reveal 



Treading the Narrow Way 63 

it. In her early womanhood and all through 
her life she has been frail, small-boned, short 
of stature, delicate, and very unmuscular. 
Her's was not the physique to struggle as she 
has against Hfe's tremendous battles, but she 
took up the burden cheerfully, looked every 
difficulty in the face squarely and openly and 
lifted her voice to the ever-listening ear and 
overcame every obstacle with gentleness and 
love. When heartaches, pains and sorrows 
seemed so heavy that human endurance could 
no longer stand the strain and tension, she 
would, through the channels of her wonderful 
self-control, step from beneath the heavy 
clouds of trials and sorrows out into the sun- 
shine of God's holy love and stand master 
and conqueror of every trial. The loyal bat- 
tles she has swept with victory are worthy 
of such praise and eulogy that the human 
mind can not find words choice enough to 
meet it. 



64 Treading the Narrow Way 

Poverty with all its worry can not engulf 
her, for she has that faith that there will be 
a way provided and she determines, and the 
mountain is seen moving in the distance. No 
time to partake of many pleasures is her lot; 
she must study her every day cares, rear her 
children, school, clothe, and provide for them. 
Many times a tear stands where joy should 
be. It is beyond all understanding why her 
cross should be so heavy when every atom of 
her strength has been used to make the world 
better, but no matter how heavy the load is, 
how painful the head might ache, or how dis- 
couraging the teacher, the present every day 
conditions must be met and the sooner begun 
the sooner ended. Every minute is occupied 
or the accumulation of wasted time makes the 
burden heavier. 

The hands work and the mind works. 
Neither can rest and accomplish the needs, 
and while the hands iron and bake and wash, 



Treading the Narrow Way 65 

the mind is occupied on what the hungry 
mouths demand, and how an old coat or vest 
or an under garment can be made into an 
article of service. 

These are the kind of women worth while; 
these are the kind that more than do their part 
in sustaining a great government. Her lot is 
not a pleasant one, but she hands down to 
posterity a better and more substantial foun- 
dation for better government than any class 
of women in our nation; her life is an open 
book where the entries are made on each day's 
pages. On page after page you can see where 
the tears have fallen, where the struggle has 
been so keen and bitter that hope had almost 
fled; but turn the page and you will find 
renewed hope. The ever-listening ear has 
heard the words bathed in grief and the an- 
swer came, "Blessed are they that mourn for 
they shall be comforted." How a few dollars 
from some good-hearted philanthropist would 



66 Treading the Narrow Way 

ease the way for this poor little struggling 
woman. Why is it when she has reached the 
point in life where she should expect the most 
the least is at hand? She has passed the 
thirty-eighth mile post, with the odds strongly 
against her. The system is torn down more 
rapidly than it can be built up. Everything 
seems to combat against her and endeavor to 
overwhelm her, but sorrows, discouragements, 
trials, hardships and heartaches with their 
utmost collective strength have not been suffi- 
cient to thwart or encompass her. Every one 
has been defeated, the cost has been gigantic, 
it has stooped her shoulders, chiseled deep 
creases in her brow and cast snow among her 
locks, robbed her of comforts due her and 
strewn old age where youth should be. The 
sad face still smiles and with an unconceivable 
determination she meets every foe in the great 
battle field of life and crushes them. 

She does it from close application of that 



Treading the Narrow Way 67 

wonderful story of love that is found in the 
fifth chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew 
from the third to the twelfth verses inclu- 
sive. The greatest solace to aching hearts the 
world has ever known. The struggle would 
have never been met and conquered if she 
had depended on her own strength, she 
needed a higher source to guide her and in 
every struggle the lowly man of Galilee stood 
beside her and when the cross became so 
heavy that she stumbled and was ready to 
fall, his loving arm was ready to shield and 
sustain her. 

With all her pains and trials there came 
into her life one night the greatest sorrow of 
all, and although the load she had carried far 
overtaxed her strength she had to bear an- 
other and heavier one. Her little sweetheart 
boy of nearly two years old came toddling in 



68 Treadmg the Narrow Way 

one day with the cruel marks of a fatal sick- 
ness on his sweet little face, and after three 
days and nights of long vigil the tired mother 
laid down to rest, and as she slept on a pil- 
low bathed with tears the pure little innocent 
soul was gathered into the arms of angels 
and carried away. Years have passed, but 
the pain lingers and when the thoughts go 
back to the silent form in the little white cas- 
ket the tender heart of this pure woman is 
so engulfed in sorrow that it seems it is en- 
tirely beyond all human endurance and pa- 
tience. It is then this still, small voice she 
has known so long, again speaks and says: 
"Come unto me all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden and I will give you rest." 

How her dear heart did ache when the death 
angel trod 



Treading the Narrow Way 69 

And took back her boy to his maker and 

God; 
No sorrow nor pain nor heart aches nor 

tears 
Are ever more known where he takes these 

small dears. 

There is something so sad in the valley of 

death, 
When the heart stops its beat and there's no 

longer breath! 
That angels must come to ease up the pain, 
And open the soul to let the tears drain. 

How long are the years and how many it 

takes 
Before there is peace from the burning heart 

aches ! 
The home is so lonely so silent and still 



70 Treading the Narrow Way 

There is something gone out that nothing 
can fill. 

His little things stand where he left them one 

day, 
The little toy dog all ready for play, 
The big choo choo train and the horse he 

called Bill, 
All wait for the hand that is silent and still. 



GRATITUDE. 

M & M 

Few people care to listen to your sorrows, 
trials and burdens if you are not succeeding. 
If you succeed, everybody is grabbing for the 
stock no matter how well filled with water 
it is. They point with pride at the successful 
man as he saunters by; he can do a great 
many things that are shady, but on account 
of his success and prominence they are 
hushed up and never rise above a whisper; 
he's dined and wined; gets cut prices on 
everything he consumes; rebates from the 
railroads and special privileges in the 
churches. But take the poor fellow that each 
day's debts eats up his pay roll and we never 
hear of his fine qualities until we read his 
obituary. 

If you will take a few leisure moments and 
look up the meaning of the word "gratitude," 
you will find that there are few words that 



y2 Treading the Narrow Way 

surpass it in quality, love and kindness. It 
clusters near the soul and is properly a vir- 
tue. In this life it is very hard to be mis- 
understood and undervalued by those we 
love, but this too in the journey from the 
cradle to the grave we must learn to bear 
without a murmur, for it's a tale often re- 
peated. 

Any one who has given their time, talent 
and attention serving the dear people, either 
as a Town Trustee, member of the School 
Board, Mayor, or any of the petty offices of 
small towns and villages, used his best judg- 
ment in endeavoring to meet every issue 
honestly, fairly and squarely, wins for his 
gratuitous services the everlasting displeas- 
ure of his constituents. 

No matter how hard you strive or how 
honest you may be there come up little in- 



Treading the Narrow Way 73 

tricate issues where there is no middle course 
and no matter what stand you take some i>eo- 
ple charge you with graft and dishonest mo- 
tives. Any one who can serve for one term 
and is so unfortunate and fooHsh as to accept 
another, has acquired a character so colored 
that it takes from ten to fifteen years in our 
best Sunday Schools to wash out the stains. 

Don't ever feel elated or think you are 
popular because you are elected and people 
call you alderman, for the first thing they 
will do will be to slip out that pleasant, sweet 
sounding word "Alderman" and put in 
*'Grafter" with the thumbscrews set. They'd 
call you a grafter if they personally 
know the treasury had been depleted for fif- 
teen years. My, the pleasures of a gratis 
councilman ! 

I have heard of people losing their minds 



74 Treading the Narrow Way 

for long intervals and then suddenly regain 
them and I have often wondered if they had 
been favored with an aldermanic pleasure 
and the mind commenced to slip into space, 
I wonder if when the cog alderman appeared 
if it wouldn't cause such a jolt that it would 
clear the whole mental atmosphere. Perhaps 
there is one redeeming feature and if it 
wasn't for some consolation the pictures and 
scenes would be so indelibly impressed that 
you would be able to recall them long after 
you'd said '*Amen." 

The spirit of revenge and retaliation were 
never very deeply imbedded in my make up. 
The seed being lightly sown I used the har- 
row instead of the cultivator and got it out. 
I am glad I did; it has helped me to get a 
good night's rest instead of fondling and ca- 
ressing discolored orbs that might have come 



Treading the Narrow Way 75 

in sudden contact with solid and knotty 
obstacles. 

I bought a small business one time from a 
devout Presbyterian; I had the greatest con- 
fidence and trust in him, which I had a sad 
right to have. If false colors are carried we 
must find it out because they carry no notice 
to warn us. Well, anyway, he spread the 
tempting menu of his careful preparation in 
great shape. He was pleasant, courteous and 
very entertaining. The way he figured 
up the invoice you'd thought mathematics 
was his specialty. His tongue kept pace with 
his pencil and after everything was figured 
up he brought up the "Bonus Good Will" 
part and I really throught he was letting me 
do him a favor by giving him one hundred 
iron men. You see I wanted his good will 
along with everybody else's. 



76 Treading the Narrow Way 

I am glad I learned about this ''Good Will" 
business. All told "Good Will" and "Bon- 
uses*' have cost me nine hundred and thirty- 
three dollars thirty-three and a third cents. 
Don't try to fool me on "Good Wills" again ; 
they're a drug on the market, very unsale- 
able and unpopular to your humble servant. 

After I paid the "Good Will" price and 
everything was agreeably settled I started in 
with my maiden business. Going through 
the bags and some other stuff in the back 
room a few days afterwards, I discovered 
bags invoiced and paid for at one hundred 
pounds shy. "Shy," I said, and he a Chris- 
tian! This taught me that there are eighty 
and ninety pound Christians. The loud 
smelling, decaying and life moving gunny 
sacks contained prepared meats for poultry. 
I quit in disgust and went into the front de- 



Treading the Narrow Way yy 

partment ; a fellow stepped in and said, "How 
is business?" and I answered "Rotten." A 
frank acknowledgment of a painful truth. 

Other things ran about the same; the 
horses were sold as unblemished, sound as a 
dollar, etc., and mind you, he a Christian and 
ministers dropping in every few days and 
talking and planning how to increase the 
congregation. My, Vm glad I used that har- 
row! When I sold out the business, I 
marked down experiences one thousand dol- 
lars. I felt pretty blue after I had lost the 
thousand bones I worked hard to get, and 
it used to be when I got the blues I eased 
my mind with graveyard poetry; pardon me 
for inserting it here. 

If I should die tonight how few would care; 
Perhaps some heart would ache, some one 
somewhere. 



yS Treading the Narrow Way 

Some might cast a lingering look, a tear 

And tremble with emotion at my bier, 

But before many days would pass away, 

Before my silent form would turn to clay, 

Fd be forgotten and alone, 

And not a heart to ache or moan, 

Oh ! this bitter, lonely life's a snare, 

The kind friends you hear so much about are 

rare. 
Some may mean it in their hearts but feign 
And measure men by dollars not by brain. 

A friend came to me one time and said he 
was in pressing financial straits and asked me 
to loan him fifteen dollars for two weeks. I 
granted the request and the loan was made. 
I thought I was familiar with the calendar 
and knew when two ordinary weeks ended, 
but those two weeks were the longest I have 



Treading the Narrozv Way 79 

ever known. Fortnight after fortnight 
passed and no end came. Long and endless 
weeks of this kind might be all right for the 
man facing the electric chair, but they had no 
solace for an individual anxious to get mar- 
ried and needing the husky "Simoleans" to 
furnish a cage for his waiting bird. 

One day I met the overdue biped and I 
said, "How about it ?" I was young then and 
I thought I could glide in as easy this way a? 
well as any phrase I had in my limited vo- 
cabulary. "Well," he said, "I'll tell you what 
I'll do. I know you are about to plunge in 
the matrimonial sea and I have a proposi- 
tion to offer you. I have a good standard 
make of organ that I don't need and if you 
will give me forty-five dollars and forget 
about that previous fifteen we will call the 
transaction closed and drop the curtain." 



8o Treading the Narrow Way 

''All right," I said, "here is your money." 

That organ may not be in existence yet, 
but it's in my memory fresh as ever. I 
couldn't play it, for it was all I could do to 
carry a tune when it was tied in a bag. I 
had no wife to play it and I couldn't keep it 
and get married, I was in a desperate condi- 
tion one day when I walked into a hardware 
store, that is a store, you know, where they 
keep ware that is hard, frying pans, dish 
pans, bread pans, etc., you know what those 
things are for. "Well," I said to the village 
wit behind the case, "I'll trade you that organ 
for enough household paraphernalia to cook 
with, take care of enough viands and stuff 
or whatever you call it, to keep two people 
about to start out together; each now sepa- 
rate and apart but very anxious to be united." 
"Agreed,'* he said, "hand over that list 



Treading the Narrow Way 8i 

you've got with the articles on and I'll have 
them ready in a short time.'' 

Funny, isn't it, how the wind is tempered 
to the shorn lamb, but how about the one 
ready to be shorn when there isn't even a 
zephyr blowing. Well, the deal was transact- 
ed, exchange made, and that is how I got my 
household goods when I married dearie. 
The financial report read like this: Actual 
cash in organ, sixty dollars; actvial worth, 
forty-five dollars; second actual value in or- 
gan, forty-five dollars; actual value of pots 
and pans twenty-five dollars, experience and 
pleasure of making a two weeks' loan, thirty- 
five dollars. This was not putting a premium 
on "Bliss" for a fellow just getting ready to 
carry the matrimonial load. 

The weight would have been some lighter 
if that weasened faced Dutchman had not 



82 Treading the Narrow Way 

worked off on me a left handed frying pan 
for a right-handed bride, and was so ex- 
tremely liberal on the good deal he had made 
that he threw in a second hand mouse trap 
when the new ones sold six for a dime. This 
was the first time I saw tears in my wife's 
eyes. The fountain was opened and they 
flowed freely. Those tears were trivial to 
the tears weVe in shed later life, but those 
first tears moved me to almost unconsolable 
grief and the emotion caused a flow of poetry. 
It's not very long and will not tire you much, 
so I will slip it in here as a filler. 

Cheer up, little darling, 

You know my love is true. 

And nowhere in this great big world 

Is a sweeter girl than you. 

I have loved you always 



Treading the Narrow Way 83 

Trust me fully, dear, 
Let me be your shining star 
I'll sparkle when you're near. 
And all along our pathway 
We'll never pluck a thorn, 
But will pluck the roses 
In life's dewy morn, 
Roses are more fragrant. 
They'll give us better cheer 
And the thorns we'll cast aside, 
They are worthless, dear. 

When I was a County Clerk and exceed- 
ingly busy pushing the quill over the big rec- 
ords, a M. E. Minister came in one day and 
accosted me with that word that arouses con- 
fidence. Brother, he said, we are figuring on 
a short order annex to the church, (remember 
that word SHORT?) and we, of course, 



84 Treading the Narrow Way 

couldn't slight you and if you will kindly do- 
nate as liberally as possible the Lord will bless 
you abundantly, for you know he loves a 
cheerful giver, and etc., and etc. Well, I re- 
sponded. When you get your subscription list 
in these parts drop in and I will help you. 

I know what an annex to some of the 
churches without or with cook stove means. 
It seems nowadays, as the prophecies are 
being filled, some curches deem it necessary to 
feed the stomach before the soul, realizing, I 
presume, a full stomach is a twin brother to 
a big heart. They beg the food and the uten- 
sils to serve it in from uncheerful givers and 
then dispense it cautiously and sparingly, the 
more sparingly the more money for the Lord. 
When the ice cream is served they forget all 
about scriptural measure of "Heaped up and 
running over" and run it under. If one dish 



Treading the Narrow Way 85 

of scriptural measure can be stretched into 
four dishes of worldly measure, there is forty 
cents instead of ten. High finance, you see! 
I've often thought a society of this kind that 
would squeeze down the measure on ice cream 
procured at a minimum cost, would bear 
watching if they were running a milk wagon 
with a pump near. If any one else gets money 
in this way they call it an unearned incre- 
ment. What would Jesus call it? I really 
would be afraid to express my thoughts at 
that kind of a meeting for fear they'd request 
the parcel post. 

In a few days the brother dropped in and 
hoisted from his inside pocket the subscrip- 
tion list and handed it to me. I glanced over 
it casually, as is natural in such cases made 
and provided, to see who were the cheerful 
givers. After concluding what I thought was 



86 Treading the Narrow Way 

a liberal donation and really beyond what a 
man of my means should give I put down 
forty dollars and handed the paper back to 
him. The ungentlemanly gentleman took it 
and looked at it and said, "Well, we expected 
much better than this from you." You know 
what feelings ebb and flow within you when 
you get a snub like this. I could feel the 
Irish blood chasing the English blood at a 
hazardous speed, but I said nothing and was 
glad again of the early use of that harrow. 



JUST POEMS. 



The Dog. 

Of all the beasts beneath the sun 
There is no other, not a one, 
That clings to man in sweet and bitter 
As faithful as the canine critter. 

When fortune smiles upon its crest 
And all your toil is richly blest 
The loyal dog is near at hand 
For slightest duty or command. 

When poverty comes stalking in 
And you have lost your precious tin, 
The good old dog is just the same 
In dire distress or glittering fame. 



88 Treading the Narrow Way 

In tattered rags or spick and span 
He has a truer heart than man, 
And when you meet most keen defeat 
His sympathy is there to greet. 

When you are old and had your day, 
With feeble limbs and head of gray, 
And angels come to take you home, 
The good old dog is last to roam. 

He'll watch beneath the stars at night 
Beside your grave a sadful sight. 
And wait and wait for many a day, 
When faded flowers have blown away. 

A dog's great love is most sublime, 

It lingers near the word divine. 

And intertwines from him above. 

For dog turned around is God and love. 



Treading the Narrow Way 89 

The Booze. 

Oh the ones who drink the booze, 

You can tell it by their flues, 

The torrid heat within flames up the nose. 

At first they're moderate drinkers, 

And become the same as thinkers, 

And what a sight for pity ere the close. 

Chorus. 

The booze, the booze, 
Any way you choose, 
No matter how you figure it you lose. 

How many homes that suffer, 

When they shelter such a duffer, 

Whose presence causes heartaches, tears and 

blows, 
But you can always tell 'em 
If you can't then you can smell 'em, 



90 Treading the Narrow Way 

But if all the signs should fail you there's 
the nose. 

If you only take a drop 
You know you'll never stop. 
Don't you realize that dynamite explodes, 
Better take an inventory, 
Before you're blown, no not to glory, 
But to where they ignite quickly, Jimmy 
Rhodes. 

What's the matter with your clothes. 

Or do you for artists pose, 

Don't you ever meditate or think 

There's enough loam in your hair 

To rob an acre bare, 

Take an invoice before another drink. 

Stop, my friend, don't be a slave, 
Do not fill a drunkard's grave. 



Trea.ding the Narrow Way 91 

Be a man from birth until close, 
Come to him, the Galilean, 
He will make your future clean, 
He's the one to take the add from off your 
nose. 

What's the Difference? 

It matters not, so some folks say, 
Where rests the form when 'neath the clay. 
There is no choice when the heart is still, 
Some always say and always will. 

This may be true when we're forgot, 
And aught remains to mark the spot. 
But a silent stone that stands all time, 
With letters cold to tell mankind. 

Some may not care where rest their bones, 
In foreign lands or near their homes. 



92 Treading the Narrow Way 

Where tender hearts can shed the tear 
And bathe the roses on the bier. 

I'd rather rest 'neath shady trees, 
That beautify and kiss the breeze 
With velvet grass spread over the plot, 
With lilies and for-get-me-not. 

The Steering Wheel. 

"Twas a party blithe and gay, 

On a joy ride as they say. 

Gliding many miles away from home. 

Midnight long was by 

They were coming in on high 

When suddenly there was an awful moan. 

The steering wheel went wrong, the papers 
said, 



Treading the Narrow Way 93 

One was badly injured, three were dead. 
The same old story neatly woven in a tale, 
The sadness of the scene behind the vale, 
And not a line or word to make you think, 
What had put the wheel upon the blink. 

The verdict of jury, so they say, 

Said the steering wheel was loose and had too 

much play; 
But by chance some people looking around, 
Some real and newer evidence was found, 
Tis evidence you find and seldom fail 
If you let the ribbon bottle tell the tale. 
So in the name of justice, as I feel, 
Why not exonerate the wheel. 



Such High Taxes, Gee-Whilaker. 

Meadow larks, as you have undoubtedly 
noticed, warble many different songs. They 



94 Treading the Narrow Way • 

sound like this to me: One says, "Here is 
your homesick girl." Another, "Light the 
light, it is gone down." Another, "Here is 
your English preacher." Another, "The 
smeeking smock bird," and others, from 
which the following poem is written, say, 
"Such high taxes, Gee-whilaker." 

As I stood in the yard of our high taxed 

home, 
And filled my lungs with pure ozone. 
My eye went wandering far and nigh, 
And I saw a meadow lark flitting by. 

He flew to a post for a moment's rest, 
And gazed a while both east and west, 
And then soared on, going higher and higher, 
Till he perched way up on the court house 
spire. 



Treading the Narrow Way 95 

From a bird's eye view of quaint renown, 
He sized up the modern Julesburg town, 
The stand pipe built on the court house 

square, 
Is an old eye sore with a record rare. 
The power house hid from the passer by 
Must been for economy, heat or pie? 
The city sewer, electric lights, 
Cement side-walks and high school sites, 
Was picturesque and nice to heed. 
But sad for the one that held the deed. 

He raised his head as he ceased to note. 
And out from the depths of his golden throat 
His voice did peal as he said with a whirr. 
Such high taxes, Gee-whilaker. 

To THE Mrs. 

I am going to take a kiss, 
And I know it's not a miss, 



96 Treading the Narrow Way 

But before I miss my kisses, 
I will take them from the Mrs. 

Kisses from the dear old Mrs. 
Are the sweetest kind of kisses. 
But if the Misses kisses, 
Then there will be kisses Mrs. 

Just as long as Mrs. kisses, 
There's no trouble with the Misses 
But let the Misses kisses 
And something's doing Misses Mrs. 

Don't Procrastinate. 

Don't wait till tomorrow, 
For joy or sorrow. 
And miss the golden today. 
For every minute, 



Treading the Narrow Way 97 

Your heart's not in it. 

There's somthing slipping away, 

'Twas Jesus who said, 

'Ere his spirit fled. 

On the cross at Calvary, 

That he who had hope, 

Need never grope. 

For the better things to be. 

So don't never worry. 

And fret and flurry, 

For things that's not for you, 

But hammer away. 

At life's forge today. 

For things that are good and true. 

Sister Mary. 
Mary, I know not who 
Has a truer heart than you. 



98 Treading the Narroiif Way 

Your*s a life that does excell 
For doing every duty well. 

In this world of woman kind 
A purer life I couldn't find, 
If I looked my life time thru, 
I would bring the crown to you. 

I am proud to tell you, dear, 
Your*s has been a life of cheer. 
Where every hardship, trial and sorrow. 
Was sweetly met before tomorrow. 

May God's blessing sweetly rest, 
In a life so richly blessed 
With kind words and cheerfulness. 
For every heart that knew distress. 

Yes. 
'Twas underneath the columbine. 



Treading the Narrow Way 99 

Where dearie said she would be mine, 
My heart rejoiced at that glad word, 
The sweetest one I ever heard. 

Fve wondered many times since then 
How one word changes lives of men, 
Some it makes and others breaks, 
And others know they've made mistakes. 

It gladdens some and saddens some, 
It opens up the way to rum, 
It fills the pen, the cells of jails, 
It wags the tongue with many tales. 

It fills the lawyer's purse with fees, 
It crowds the courts with quick decrees, 
It to the drug store many guide, 
It fills the graves with suicide. 

It pulls the trigger of the gun, 



lOO Treading the Narrow Way 

It breaks the heart of many a one, 
It causes pain where joy should be. 
It fills the home with misery. 

It joins the short unto the tall, 
It never heeds old wisdom's call, 
It clasps the hands of slim and stout. 
And makes a mess beyond a doubt. 

It breaks the dishes on your head, 
It makes you wish that you were dead. 
It mixes father with the son, 
It has no end when once begun. 

It's no respecter of your right. 
It gets you out at dead of night. 
It makes its scars and many a whelt. 
It makes you cuss T. Roosevelt. 

It makes the Irish like the Dutch, 



Treading the Narrow Way loi 

The black the brown the squaw and such. 

It causes if the truth would tell, 

A thing on earth you all know well. 

So with all wisdom I'll confess, 
Before you tackle this word yes, 
Have these professions up in G, 
Lawyer, preacher and M. D. 



The Lay of the Last Hen. 

Twas yesterday the deed was done, 
That made my heart feel like a ton. 
When cruel fate held its sway. 
And robbed my hen of her last lay. 

The sympathy swelled in my breast. 
For my old hen so long caressed, 
Who stood by me for many years. 
Thru joy and sorrow, mirth and tears. 



I02 Treading the Narrow Way 

When times were hard and crops were light, 
There was to me no sweeter sight, 
To get that tgg and let it melt, 
Underneath my gnawing pelt. 

The tariff never worried her 
She did her duty at one per, 
Wilson, Taft or Roosevelt, 
Never had a cause she felt. 

She built the muscle in my arm, 
She paid the taxes on the farm, 
She kept the wolf from strolling in, 
She clothed the kids from Kate to Win. 

She always let the whole world know, 
With joyful song in rain or snow. 
That she'd performed a duty neat, 
That man himself has never beat. 



Treading the Narrow Way 103 

I couldn't help it, I'll confess, 
The tears flowed freely, more or less, 
When that dear form was tenderly laid, 
Beneath the elm tree's pleasant shade. 

Here's to the hen upon the nest, 
That keeps the table, fills the guest, 
Builds up the system, ne'er regrets 
And brings results whene'er she sets. 

The Dear Old Hod. 

When I've labored hard all day. 
And the supper's cleared away. 
There's a joy before I nod, 
When I load my dear old hod. 

As the smoke curls in the air, 
Chasing from me life's dull care, 
I can lean far back and think, 
And put the worry on the blink. 



104 Treading the Narrow Way 

Here's to thee, Missouri cob, 
Many years upon the job, 
Your's a mission not all bad, 
If you ease the load on dad. 

Dear Old Kate. 

I know I stayed a little late. 
The last time that I courted Kate, 
I had a speech I wished to try, 
And how the hours hurried by. 

The question that I wished to pop, 
Would never let me have the flop, 
My cheeks would burn, my throat get dry, 
I was nearly hot enough to fry. 

I guess I tried a dozen times, 
I drilled myself in all the lines, 
But when I reached the vital point. 
The whole blame works got out of joint. 



Treading the Narrow Way 105 

It made me mad and also sad, 
I felt like going to the bad, 
rd practised long, out in the trees. 
Just how to face her on my knees. 

I'd hold the bough as Katie's hand. 
And with the best at my command, 
I'd bare my soul with pleading tears. 
For her to join me all the years. 

I guess I never would have won. 

If Katie hadn't just for fun 

Heard my appeal with silent feet. 

And said, "Why, sure, you dear old sweet." 

Tim. 

Once I knew a man named Tim, 
Thought a mighty lot of him, 
For his goodness, heart and mind. 
Were of such a loving kind. 



io6 Treading the Narrow Way 

Never heard him boast or tell, 
Of the things he'd done so well: 
Lips would kinda set with tension, 
If his past you'd slightly mention. 

Kinda made his face look sad, 
Maybe some great grief he'd had, 
But he'd pass it off and say, 
Kinda looks like rain today. 

Wasn't much past fifty-nine, 
Led a life serene and fine, 
Lived just on the edge of town, 
Liked to have the folks look round. 

Greatest chum of little tads, 
Liked to humor all their fads, 
Fixed their wagons, made them trains. 

Soothed their many cares and pains. 



Treading the Narrow Way loy 

Made no difference to Tim, 
If you'd never heard of him, 
He would always say, "Hello," 
Said his mother taught him so. 

Worldly goods he hadn't much, 
Never seemed to care for such, 
Said he liked the Master's way, 
Of doing things for just today. 

Dear old Tim took sick one night, 
Thought his spirit would take flight, 
But we all just hurried in, 
And it helped revive old Tim. 

Said it made him awful glad, 
Wished a larger house he had, 
But we all said, get well, Tim, 
Couldn't lose a man like him. 



io8 Treading the Narrow Way 

The Business Man. 

Here is to the business man, 
Who does the very best he can, 
And pays to each their honest debt. 
And don't forget it makes him sweat. 

He labors from the morn till night, 
With brain and muscle in the fight, 
To keep his head above the stream. 
When finances are not serene. 

He's to the one you always go, 
When life has pained you with a woe. 
You know his purse is always free, 
To lessen grief or misery. 

You toss on him most carelessly. 
The gratis job of town trustee, 
And then you pass around the word. 
He's just the man for the school board. 



Treading the Narrow Way 109 

He helps to school your girls and boys, 
He shares with you your pains and joys, 
He helps to pay the preacher's bill, 
And aids the churches with good will. 

He has to pay his bills when due, 
But if he asks the same of you. 
You think your credit's met his fears, 
And let it run along for years. 

You let him long and look and look, 
At your account upon the book, 
And you'll admit if you are frank. 
He pays your interest at the bank. 

If he would say and tell you true, 
When your account has long been due, 
That ten per cent was charged to you, 
You'd swear until the air was blue. 



no Treading the Narrow Way 

If he helps you, then why not him, 
And don't keep sending off your tin, 
But give it to your home merchants, 
And keep the gloss from off their pants. 

Falling Snow. 
There's something in the falling snow. 
That brings back years of long ago. 
That makes you think of younger days. 
Behind a span of gallant bays. 

The frosty air, the rosy dames. 
The secrets and the loving names. 
Of days gone by long years ago, 
Comes back today with falling snow. 

The laughter pealed o'er rocks and trees, 
The songs re-echoed with the breeze. 
Of merry rides so bright and gay, 
Are chasing thru my mind today. 



Treading the Narrow Way iii 

The biting air with keen delight, 
Puts crispness in the appetite, 
And mother's pies of golden hue, 
Soon faded like the morning dew. 

And how I wish I could today, 
Turn back the years the youthful way, 
And drive the bays and see them go, 
And blush with youth midst falling snow. 



SALLIE'S I^YALTY. 

^ M M 

That's Sallie over there in that potato 
patch. She has been endeavoring to tease 
from mother earth enough tubers to supply 
the family through a long winter. Nature in 
this and many other instances has been un- 
kind. The rain waited too long and the one 
supply of food that fills so large a place are 
small as marbles, nevertheless this dear soul 
laboriously gathered them and is carrying 
them, pail at a time, and storing them away 
for a long, cold winter. Though the tubers 
are small and puny, she has a way of cooking 
them with such marked success that they 
would tickle the palate of a king and he*d be 
passing his plate the second time. 



Treading the Narrow Way 113 

Sal does the housework, the buying of sup- 
plies, cares for the chickens, plants the gar- 
den, does the sewing, picks up the paint brush 
when necessary, and does about everything 
that anyone can do. She is past fifty years 
of age, most of them hard and bitter years. 
They have not been the kind of years where 
the goal has been worth the trials and bitter- 
ness. The streaks of silver are beginning to 
show in her dark hair, she is small in phy- 
sique, clean limbed, Hthe, resourceful, deter- 
mined, and intelligent. Her schooling in the 
practical side of life is an attainment any one 
should be proud of. She is one of the most 
wiry and courageous women that has ever 
lived such a grand and noble life and kept 
the sad, dreary and lonely part locked up in 
her unselfish heart. 

Behold her as she is, one of God's purest 



114 Treading the Narrow Way 

gifts! Her life is clean, wholesome and 
grand and of such a sweetness and beauty 
that mocks to scorn any imitation of the ar- 
tist. For eight long years she has cared un- 
complainingly for the aged, widowed mother 
as her almost sole benefactor of aid and cheer 
in the home. She has sacrificed, schemed, 
planned, worked, and struggled in a way that 
is worthy of our greatest financiers, diplo- 
mats, or statesmen. She has fought within 
her own heart far greater battles and carried 
away the victory to a more deserving reward 
than many a soldier on the battlefield. She 
has denied herself in order that she might 
give the fullest measure of devotion to a dear 
old mother who is slipping slowly, slowly to 
that great home of rest and comfort. 

God bless you, Sallie, in your old age, when 
the silver streaks no longer glisten in your 



Treading the Narrow Way 115 

hair and it is all turned to the whiteness and 
purity of snow ; when your poor, tired aching 
limbs from their long years of toil no longer 
yield to quick response, when time chisels its 
deep furrows in your brow and your keen 
eye loses its lustre and grows dim. I hope 
God will reward you with the choicest gifts 
of his kingdom, and when the final summons 
is made and you stand in the open doorway 
of his love, bathed in the purity of the spark- 
ling dew in the evening time of life, may the 
sweetness of your character come wafting 
gently in the fulness of its beauty and dwell 
amidst all that is holy, sweet and sacred. 

Dearest Sal, you're growing old, 
But there never can be told. 
The great jewels you possess, 
In your life of righteousness. 



ii6 Treading the Narrow Way 

I would love you just the same. 
Had you reached the highest fame. 
For you have a heart so true, 
There would be no change in you. 

You have done all duties well, 
Better than my tongue can tell, 
I would love to ease your way, 
And turn your winters back to May. 

I have but one life to live, 

But for you Vd freely give, 

I'd go down that lonesome valley. 

If 'twould help you, dear old Sallie. 



SUNSHINE. 

"m & "m 

In endeavoring to entertain you in this 
chapter I wish I might have the wit of a 
Nasby or come Nye the Mark; but not hav- 
ing the brilliant talents of either of these 
illustrious wits who cracked the ribs of so 
many people I hope you will bear with me 
patiently as I proceed to give to you some 
rays of sunshine I have been picking up for 
the last twenty years from all classes of 
people. 

A fellow said to me one time I'll tell you a 
panacea for every ailment. I have taken it 
for years and you don't need a skilled Pharm- 
acist to compound it. This was the simple 
remedy: Trust in providence and keep your 



ii8 Treading the Narrow Way 

bowels open. I thought it was a pretty good 
prescription and if applied carefully you would 
never have appendicitis or a good many other 
complaints. Of ocurse, he said, some people 
ask too much of providence. I hardly think 
it fair to ask the Lord to furnish you the land, 
the patch of potatoes, a pail to put them in, 
a spade to dig them with, and then get down 
on your knees and in funeral tones tell him 
you are out of spuds and would like a mess 
for dinner with the jackets off. Don't ask 
too much. 

It is better to whistle than to groan. It 
will make some heart lighter to hear you 
whistle than to groan. If you can't whistle 
a tune sizzle something through your teeth, 
there's cheer in it for some one. No matter 
how worrisome, difficult or perplexing the 
problem is, don't worry or brood over it. 



Treading the Narrow Way 119 

Whistle if you can, sizzle if you can't. It 
will keep you from getting meloncolic; colic 
that comes from something besides eating too 
many Colorado watermelons with the accent 
strong on the water. 

IVe known people whom you'd think from 
all appearances they hadn't a care in the 
world, the sunny side was always exposed 
and unconsciously they would be dropping 
encouraging words, doing kind deeds, lend- 
ing acts of assistance, and doing everything 
to lessen the other fellow's burden. They 
didn't tell any one that they didn't know where 
their breakfast was coming from, but some- 
how or other they would get hold of some 
patent breakfast food and eat it in its native 
state if no cow was at hand and then they 
were all right until the next meal, luncheon, 
I believe is the proper society word. 



I20 Treading the Narrow Way 

It never pays to be stingy with eulogies or 
encomiums. A little praise has caused many 
a breast to heave with gladness and chase 
away gloom. The cost is small, thank God 
it's outside of the trusts. So doh*t be back- 
ward in using it at every opportunity you 
meet. If the sermon is good, go up and tell 
the semi-paid man behind the pulpit, it won't 
kill him. He may be surprised, but keep at 
it until he gets used to it. If brother or sister 
so and so has made a misstep and you are an 
unbeliever or not, don't break your neck in 
rushing to your neighbor and ah, ahing it 
all over town. Let two thoughts get into 
your head at once and let the better thought 
prevail, and instead of helping stain the char- 
acter of a poor unfortunate, make it your 
business to use your good advice, if you 
haven't any then keep still. 



Treading the Narrow Way 121 

When a church member steps from the 
narrow path, why has everybody such a sud- 
den interest ? Why does it cause such a loos- 
ening of tongues ? The Bible says, "he that is 
without sin among you let him cast the first 
stone/' If any one but Jesus was without sin 
why not advertise it. Give it to the Post and 
use the red letters on the front page. The 
way I look at the parable quoted by Jesus is 
that if a stone is thrown some one has to 
throw it, it may be thrown with intent or 
carelessness, but in either event the stone has 
been thrown and some one will be struck, so 
the best way is not to throw the stone, if you 
have to throw something, go into one of the 
leagues and then don't throw a stone. Throw 
a baseball, but don't hit the umpire. 

Wherever you can place a rose where a 
thorn has been, do it. There is both fragrance 



122 Treading the Narrow Way 

and class to a rose, something sweet, cheerful 
and pretty; but the fellow that can find any 
redeeming qualities in a thorn is not the per- 
son that can stand inspection. Where could 
you put him where he would be an improve- 
ment? You can't progress unless you make 
use of the things progress is found in. Pluck 
the rose every time, leave the other alone. 

Don't wait 'till it's time to erect the tomb- 
stone before you pay tribute to your dear 
friend. One small flower is worth more to the 
living than tons piled on their caskets. Some 
poor fellows never get tomb stones, head 
stones or anything to mark their graves. How 
much better you feel if you have never put a 
pebble in any one's path as an obstruction to 
their progress than if you had been rolling 
boulders and now see your mistake. You can't 
afford to do it. Pay your little tributes all 



Treading the Narrow Way 12^ 

along the journey of life. Be as careful drop- 
ping pains or sorrows as you would dropping 
pearls. 

Don't wait 'till your father, mother or wife 
dies, then lie about them on their tombstones. 
You only have one father and one mother; be 
careful and think some before you pour out 
any derogatory stateemnts or cheap invectives 
concerning them. Your wife is entitled to a 
great many compliments you never gave her. 
The reverential words on the slab in the cem.e- 
tery isn't going to fool any one, and have 
them to believe, as you would wish, that you 
did the fine thing, when really you are to 
blame for stealing from her about twenty 
years of her life time. You've caused hollow 
cheeks where roses should have been and you 
stole many pleasures from her and enjoyed 
them all by yourself. Too much swine in yoi^r 



124 Treading the Narrow Way 

nature to make people think you were sincere 
in your profuse epigram on the tombstone. 

So many people think they are endowed 
with a peculiar and special sort of wisdom 
and are able to fool their fellow men so suc- 
cessfully that they try it on the Lord. Here is 
where they make a fatal mistake, for the 
Lord certainly knew what he was doing when 
he made countenances. The newspaper's 
most clever ads are no comparison to the 
clean, open ads the Lord puts on faces and 
the clear unfrosted windows where you can 
look far into the soul. 

You can't break man's laws without being 
detected. If you are a sneak criminal, inebri- 
ate, crook, lascivious, immoral or any other 
of the degrading types in the category of a 
false man, the warning is openly and clearly 
displayed on your countenance. You can't fly 



Treading the Narrow Way 125 

false colors and succeed, for sooner or later 
you pay the penalty to the last farthing. 
When, you hear the remark "I don't like his 
looks," there is something shown in the coun- 
tenance to verify the statement or no accusa- 
tion would have been made. Be a man and 
your face will do the advertising. 

Don't be afraid of censure or criticism or 
let it keep you from helping the fellow that is 
down. God gave us religion for that purpose. 
It's something to use every day in the week 
and not a specialty for the Sabbath ; the more 
you use it the brighter it gets. Anything you 
don't use and keep polished loses its useful- 
ness and becomes rusty. Use it whenever you 
can and you'll be surprised the confidence you 
gain in people's hearts. It's the greatest puri- 
fier in the world, that's why God gave it to us. 
He knew what he was doing. It's the only 



126 Treading the Narrow Way 

thing in the world that will lift up the fallen 
woman, the drunken man, the horse thief, the 
blasphemer and all others when every hand is 
turned against them. It's a panacea for every 
evil. It's the only thing that will take human- 
ity with all their sins after they are entirely 
forsaken and down at the threshhold of hell 
and make them better. It will take them in 
the eleventh hour when they come sneaking in 
at the back door with characters stained as 
black as night and every law has been trans- 
gressed, but as they plead piteously for for- 
giveness, their petition is heard and all their 
sins are blotted out and the Lord gives them 
another chance. He stoops down in his great 
mercy and love and gives them that peace be- 
yond all understanding. He raises them up 
and helps them reach for the cross when no 
hand is extended to help them. 



Treading the Narrow Way 127 

At every opportune chance laugh long and 
heartily, nothing is better to cheer and com- 
fort, and while it is doing the other fellow 
good you are getting the cheapest medicine 
on the market for your digestive organs. Try 
it after you eat some boarding house pancakes 
an inch think. You have lots of things to 
smile for. There is always some one else 
worse off than yourself. You see them every- 
where. If you have a large family your neigh - 
bor has a larger one. If you have none at all 
pity your neighbor who can't figure out some 
way to get rid of his mother-in-law without 
losing his wife. If you are able to hobble 
around, have a heart for the fellow in the 
wheel chair and the fellow that has to stay 
flat on his back and never sees the sun rise. 

There are two kinds of sunshine; one is 
entirely dependent upon the individual and the 



128 Treading the Narrow Way 

other was inaugurated shortly after creation. 
Each is necessary to fill the divine plan. While 
one kind is periodical in some people, the other 
is always at hand unless clouds intervene. 
God's sunshine is unexcelled and is a marvel 
in itself for warmth, beauty, cheerfulness and 
grandeur. The rising and falling of this won- 
derful orbit body is said to start and finish the 
work of man, as he was supposed to labor and 
scheme from sun to sun. 

This plan may have been jKDpular and prop- 
er before the day of the multi-millionaire, but 
the time is too short for the present day man, 
and in order to pay the necessary obligations 
to exist the twilight at both ends must be 
consumed and then reach in and grab several 
hours of darkness. The housewife may have 
to sew and rock the baby and prove her con- 
tention that her work is never done, but it's 



Treading the Narrow Way 129 

up to the Governor, the old man, Dad, or any 
other name you may call him, to keep the 
flour in the bin, coal in the bucket, shoes on 
the children, and an endless number of other 
things. He's the lad that must fix it up with 
the banker when the note is renewed. He must 
through some devised method dress the kids 
in schools as good as his more prosperous 
neighbor, or there's snobs and tears. He must 
provide something besides the proverbial soup 
bone that one neighbor could borrow from an- 
other through the winter months. He must 
buy the latest books, procure lyceum and 
Chautauqua tickets, pay the preacher, the ice 
man, the milk man, the water man, light man, 
and dig continually for charity, and thus you 
see the sun to sun theory has the bottom torn 
out of it. 

Dad is never still long enough for the birds 



130 Treading the Narrow Way 

to build nests in his goatee and set three 
weeks. If he slackens up you notice a visible 
reduction in your pancake pile. The Lord 
didn't make the suns far enough apart for dad 
or some other people. I worked for a farmer 
one time that used to start out with a hand- 
made sun about two-thirty A. M. and never 
ceased till ten P. M. The meals always both- 
ered me ; I couldn't tell if it was breakfast the 
next morning or two suppers. If God's sun- 
shine meets man's sunshine and the two mix 
properly, you've got an individual that is a 
continual pleasure, one whose existence is ex- 
hilarating. He whistles and sings and smiles 
and laughs and gets out of life everything 
that is good, and everybody likes and knows 
him. 

I was never so ashamed in my life as I was 
one time when I had encased in my left check 



Treading the Narrozv Way 131 

a quid of tobacco the size of a hen's egg. I 
was carrying on nonchalantly a conversation 
with a depot master, and the saliva was gath 
ering so rapidly, it wasn't long before I could 
only grunt. I always disliked to ruin a floor 
with expectoration and was also embarrassed 
by the presence of the agent's boy, a little 
fellow of four years, but my mouth was so 
full and my cheeks so inflated that leakage 
was starting and I was forced to eject it or 
swallow it. I chose the former and let it go. 
It sounded like the distant booming of guns 
and the space required to contain it on the 
floor was unbelievable. If its dimensions 
didn't cover a foot square outside of the in- 
numerable rivulets in every direction, I'll buy 
my wife a twelve dollar Easter bonnet for a 
Christmas present. The little boy looked at it 
and said, *'My, that's a big one"! I sneaked 



132 Treading the Narrow Way 

out crestfallen, abashed and ashamed, but 
didn't have the sense to quit for some years 
afterwards, when the preacher said something 
about the ashes to ashes and dust to dust. 



TEMPERANCE. 



The cause of temperance is one that has 
been close to my heart for twenty years. 
Taken from the logical standpoint of protec- 
tion to the home, sound saneness, improve- 
ment in morals, an enhancement of citizen- 
ship, it is the second paramount issue of the 
age. Take away liquor, stop the traffic en- 
tirely, and you reduce seventy-five per cent of 
crime. The empty whisky-bottle is the great- 
est curse that ever existed. When it is 
standing filled in front of some bar-room 
mirror, it is harmless, but when it is empty 
it signifies that it has been drank by somebody 
and has been the direct cause for all that has 
followed. 



134 Treading the Narrow Way 

Trace it up and you will find sorrow, mis 
ery, heartaches, remorse, disgrace, shame, hu- 
miliation, want, poverty, destroyed homes, 
cruelty, hatred, anger, revenge, and murder. 
Rags, vulgarity, dishonor, wasted lives, and 
deceit. Ruined sweethearts, broken-hearted 
wives, disgraced parents, and hungry, shoe- 
less children. Disease, filth, white slavery, 
prize fights, tangoes, rottenness, and shame. 
Keeley cures, jails, penitentiaries, poorhouses, 
brothels, cabarets, and insane asylums. 
Thieves, robbers, safe blowers, beggars, pick- 
pockets, delirium tremors, and death. Leave it 
alone ! 

Some people say there is no harm in it; 
there isn't if you leave it alone. You can take 
a loaded revolver and lay it alongside of a 
well-filled whisky bottle and they will get 
along side by side peacefully as long as time 



Treading the Narrow Way 135 

exists. Each one separate and apart are harm- 
less ; but let a sane man come along and drink 
the whisky, pick up the revolver, and what 
happens? Every nationality without distinc- 
tion to race or color. Irishmen included, will 
run for safety. 

A well-educated young man with brilliant 
prospects, neatly attired, attractive, and of 
fine, honorable parentage, was passing a sa- 
loon one day when a friend standing in the 
doorway invited him in. He had never been 
in a place of this kind in his life. His parents 
had taught him, friends advised him, and a 
sweet faced girl had warned him. Conscience 
told him to decline and go on, but, like mil- 
lions of others, he heeded the invitation and 
stepped in. "Come up and take something," 
the tempter said. "No," he said, "I never 
drink." "Come on," urged the tempter. "It 



136 Treading the Narrow Way 

won't hurt you." *^NO," he said; "it's be- 
neath the dignity of a true gentleman and it 
would break my mother's heart." "Ah, come 
on, don't be a kid," he urged, and still the boy 
said no. After continued and repeated solici- 
tation he finally yielded and drank his first 
glass. 

Alas, the fatal mistake was made. Years of 
careful training were swept aside. Hopefttl 
aspirations of his mother when she looked ot? 
his innocent face in the cradle were all for 
naught. Solemn advice from a kind father 
was lost sight of, and the deed was done. 
That first drink fired his brain. Others were 
taken and his eyes shone, the house treated, 
and the once quiet, manly lad was loud and 
boisterous. Self-respect was cast aside and 
foul utterances flew fast and thick from a 
once clean mouth. The end came. He reeled 



Treading the Narrow Way 137 

in drunkenness and fell to the floor in a gib- 
bering drunken stupor. He was put to bed 
and when sober he felt the shame and remorse 
so keenly that he was at the point of self de- 
struction. He thought of his mother, his 
father, the dear little sweetheart, and his 
friends. He was so afraid they would all hear 
of his ignominy that he kept secluded. He 
couldn't bear to face them, tell all and start 
anew. 

The humiliation was more than he could 
stand and he slipped farther and farther down 
the steep and rapid descent to hell. Back in 
his cheerful and once comfortable home a 
dear old mother sat waiting and watching 
year after year the lamp was kept burning. A 
kind old father sat with bowed head thinking 
and thinking. A dear little girl was weeping 
and weeping, and still he didn't come. Where, 



138 Treading the Narrow Way 

O where was he and why didn't he come? 
Alas! how sad as he sank lower and lower. 
Drunken brawls were common, nights spent 
in revelry very often; the dissipation was 
telling, his once clean countenance was hag- 
gard. His step was languid, lethargy W3«5 
settling upon him, and his whole being was 
repulsive. His character was no longer clean 
and a thing of beauty. Brothels caught him 
and God's penalties were discernible for the 
violation of his laws. Decent men shunned 
him and pure women scorned him, but still 
the light was kept burning. The mother 
watched, the father waited, the sweetheart 
prayed, and the friends yearned; but down, 
down, down he went. Even dogs hurried by 
him, the filth and disease was nauseating. 

The years ssped quickly and there he is 
clear down at the bottom, an object of disgust 



Treading the Narrozv Way 139 

and scorn. Behold him, beneath the mass of 
stale and putrid slime, a castoif , friendless and 
penniless vagabond. Beneath the most loath 
some and foul degeneracy conceivable; even 
beneath the filthy sewer. He lay on a bundle 
of rags in a drunkard's hut. As he moaned 
and groaned, an old friend passing by heard 
him, stepped in and stood looking at him. 
With tears streaming down his cheeks the boy 
looked up and said, "my life is ebbing, I am 
at the border line, my career is wasted ; I am 
a drunken, despised and worthless sot, friend- 
less and alone. I can see nothing ahead but 
the blackest despair. Oh my poor old mother, 
my poor old father, my dear little sweet heart, 
My Sav — oh — oh." Another spell grasped 
him and as he tossed and shrieked and 
moaned, grappling with the demon, writhing 
in mental anguish, terror clouded his coun- 



I40 Treading the Narrow Way 

tenance, his eyes rolled, his limbs jerked, the 
mouth dropped open, the tongue protruded, he 
clutched until the blood trickled from the torn 
flesh, a loud, gurgling, terrifying scream, and 
he was dead. Died with the delirium tremens 
caused by the rum demon. As the old friend 
wiped away the tears and stood looking at his 
pitiful form he noticed in one of his torn and 
ragged pockets a slip of paper. He pulled it 
out and read : 

Listen, friend, today, 
To what I have to say, 
Don't let temptation sway 
And miss the narrow way. 

When you are young and gay 
And anxious for the fray 
Be ready to say "Nay" 
And tread the narrow way. 



Treading the Narrow Way 141 

The debt I have to pay 
As here near death I lay 
Wouldn't hold so much dismay 
Had I trod the narrow way. 

Oh tread the narrow way 
And never miss a day 
Ask Jesus how to pray 
And tread the narrow way. 

How can America, the foremost nation of 
the world, that has long boasted of liberty 
and advancement, allow the liquor traffic 
to continue when the condition it causes are 
so critical. It is stealing away her brains, 
increasing her crime, lowering her moral 
standing, demoralizing her citizenship, and 
giving to posterity a weaker race and causing 
such poverty, misery and unhumanitarian 



142 Treading the Narrow Way 

distress. Can this enlightened nation afford 
its continuance and let it remain when it has 
a grasp so powerful that it is endangering its 
very vitals? Can America, with her unsur- 
passed institutions of learning, her brilliant 
and scholarly statesmen, her great mineral and 
agricultural wealth yet un found and devel- 
oped, allow a traffic so alarmingly demoral- 
izing as to let her constitutional principles 
decline? Can she sit still, under her broad 
and world famed methods of progress, and 
allow such a traffic, that devastates from 
every source, for a revenue wrung from 
women's tears, that is so rapidly depreciating 
her citizenship. Is she prudent? Is she ap- 
plying the Christian principles of her consti- 
tution to obtain revenue from a traffic so 
nefarious and debauching? If she realizes 
the danger ahead why delay an amendment 
that enhances citizenship and principle. 



Treading the Narrow Way 143 

America, 'tis thee I prize, 

'Twas underneath thy azure skies, 

Where heaven's light first met my eyes. 

I love thy thrift and enterprise, 
To me beloved and so wise 
Thy name is one I idolize. 

Thy blood did purchase liberty, 

To make this land so great and free, 

And quench forever tyranny. 

Oh may thy name forever be 
Embraced within a righteous plea, 
That lessens pain and misery. 

It is for thee that I will fight, 
When'er thy cause is for the right, 
For none but these e'er use thy might. 



144 Treading the Narrow Way 

ril heed your call with keen delight, 
But should I fall before the night, 
Let freedom's flag be my last sight. 



EVERY DAY PHILOSOPHY. 

M M ^ 

Look out for the man whose face shows it 
pains him to say "Good Morning." 

* * 5|! 

Never be afraid to trust the man whose 
dog meets him with a bound. 

* * * 

The mad rush to join the appendicitis club 
and sing in the choir invisible has lost its pop- 
ularity, both for the good of posterity and the 
pocket book. 

* * jft 

Some people take a great deal of liberty 
with the English language, when they speak 

of work. 

* * * 

Stick to the boys who borrow a five occa- 



146 Treading the Narrow Way 

sionally and pay it back; rather than the fel- 
lows who love you like a fly does molasses 
when your roll would choke a lazy mule. 

* * ♦ 

It*s cheaper to buy your coal from your 
r^ular dealer and take short weight, than to 
steal it from the railroad and pay court costs. 

* * * 

It's an ice cold fact that the fellow who is 
continually condemning others* faults and 
pointing with pride to his own great meritable 
achievements, is not entitled to a premium 
for sincerity. 

* * * 

It's often the sour, surly looking man that 
goes down in his pocket and gives you his 
last quarter, when hunger is beating a fast 
tattoo against your breastworks. 



Treading the Narrow Way 147 

Because a man joins the church and be- 
comes a pious and strict respecter of Sunday 
observance, don't cast all caution aside and 
let him sell you gold mine stock on Monday, 
unless you know something about the mine. 

* * * 

Some men tell you the wonderful things 
they have done from the corner store dry 
goods box and then let their wives earn the 
living over the wash tub. 

* * * 

Many a man has nearly grasped St. Peter's 
hand, when his wife's razor edged tongue 
drove him clean down to perdition. 

* * * 

The fellow who is always harping hypocrite 
and hurling cheap invectives against the 
church isn't the man to arouse confidence, the 
only one he helps is the devil. 



148 Treading the Narrow Way 

Take away profanity from some men's con- 
versation and you haven't enough left to 
know what they said. 

* H« * 

When a man buys an Auto or a Ford on 
credit and lets the whiskers grow on his coal 
bill they say he's got the fever. I don't think 
it could be the brain kind. 



If money and whiskey would lose their in- 
fluence in the courts, juries and legislatures 
would go to sleep and jail doors rust on their 
hinges. 

* * * 

When the Lord turns his X rays upon the 
people, the churches will fill so rapidly that 
Easter bonnets and dress suits can be picked 
up anywhere. 



Treading the Narrow Way 149 

I know a wealthy man by the name of 
Moore who never was satisfied. 

* * * 

Obituaries are not a safe guide to the real 
truth. 

* * * 

Recollections become dim on the witness 

stand. 

* * * 

It's better to faint in the arms of truth and 
die in poverty than to lie for the lap of lux- 
ury and die disgraced. 

* ^ ;!; 

A drunken man's breath is preferable to 

the wagging tongue of a gossip. 

* * * 

Any man could live with a woman who has 
the patience to bathe in a wash tub twenty- 
one inches in diameter for seventeen years 
without complaining. 



150 Treading the Narrow Way 

Marry in haste and repent in alimony. 

* * * 

It's a sad fact that many a man has missed 
his calling and there is elegant material for 
day laborers among the professions and vice 

versa. 

* * * 

If it wasn't for $$$ a great many people 
would be wearing the stripes. 

* * * 

Some men are so economical they go with- 
out socks to buy whiskey. 

If some women were better cooks there 
would be less dyspepsia and fewer divorces. 

If too many cooks spoil the broth, could too 
many church denominations spoil the man? 



Treading the Narrow Way 151 

The longer you use the Christ-Hke religion 
the better you like it and the better it makes 
you. 

* * * 

The man who makes careless remarks about 
women does not possess the fine attributes of 
a gentleman. 

* * * 

If religion cost money, how some church 
members with bible names would grab for 
their purses when the lights go out. 

* * * 

Religion and sympathy cost nothing, but 
you'd think they were diamonds the way 
some people use them. 

* * * 

The first marriage is for love, the second 
for convenience, and the third a cold business 
proposition. Don't try for a four-bagger. 



152 Treading the Narrow Way 

The cleanliness of the tea towel is a safe 
criterion to a good house-keeper. 

* J|: * 

The great jewel "Consistency'' cannot be 
bought with money. 

* * * 

Some people are so hard hearted, onions 
would have no effect at a funeral. 

* * :f: 

If you don't like the taste of life's medi- 
cine, be your own doctor and change the in- 
gredients. 

* * * 

If some weak-kneed marshals and sherififs 
would do their duty, there would be less boot- 
leggers. 

* * * 

Some women join the ladies' aid and use 
the lemon extravagantly. 



Treading the Narrow Way 153 

Many a woman can hardly keep from yell- 
ing "Hallelujah" when her husband dies. 

* * * 

If some mothers don't spend more time 
with their children and less with politics this 
country will be over-run with pick-pockets. 

* * * 

If all mis-mated marriages were suddenly 
annulled, it wouldn't take an expert mathe- 
matician to count those left in wedlock. 

* * * 

If it wasn't for their money, thousands of 
women would leave their husbands. 

5^ * * 

Whiskey has killed more men than all the 

surgeons. 

* * * 

Lay the rod on the child before he gets too 
strong. 



154 Treading the Narrow Way 

Better be a lady waiting than marry a sot. 

* * * 

Honesty stops millions from becoming mil- 
lionaires. 

* * * 

Women born in Alaska seldom get married ; 
too long in cold storage. 

* * * 

The undertaker's sympathy never interferes 
with his profits ; he gets the last crack at you 
and you can't kick. 



Many a woman, who never had an extra 
pair of hosiery at home, loses sight of econo- 
my, after her marriage, and plunges into ex- 
travagance so heedlessly that her husband 
gives up in discouragement. 



Treading the Narrow Way 155 

Live within your means, but don't borrow 

ruipv fn dn it 



money to do it. 

* :jj jjs 

Spend your money when you are young, if 
you wan to spend your old age in the poor 

house. 

* * * 

Put a strong proviso in your deed before 
you turn it over to your children, if you ex- 
pect to buy your own tobacco. 

The boy who criticizes his father's depleted 
finances on account of hardships and honest 
failures, should be bodily removed into the 
open air with the same amount of clothes he 
had when he was born and let the thermome- 
ter show forty degrees below zero. 

* * * 

A court or jury that will convict a man for 



156 Treading the Narrow Way 

stealing a ten cent soup bone and acquit the 
man who made thousands by going into bank- 
ruptcy ought to have a steady stream of hot 
tar running down their aesophagus. 

:{: ^ ^ 

Many a rock-ribbed democrat votes for a 
Republican, if there is something in it. 

* * * 

The tramp, with his back against the wa- 
ter tank, studies as hard on his side of the 
problem of existence as does the fellow with 
greater resources, who is up against it. 

* * * 

The man who can fulfill the bible by taking 
the slap on both sides of the cheek is seven 
parts lamb and one part Irish. 

The difference between a cackling hen and 



Treading the Narrow Way 157 

a cackling women is, one cackles when she 
lays and the other cackles all the time she 
don't lay. 

* * * 

Trust in God but look out for everybody 
else. * 5i: * 

The man that totes a whiskey blossom on 
the end of his flue carries a cheap add for the 
devil. * * * 

Don't worry over the sport that can smoke 
twenty cigarettes a day. 

* * =1^ 

The girl that marries the man to reform 
him has a SAD lesson to learn. 
A good excuse saves lots of lying. 



GLIMPSES FROM THE PAST. 



I most humbly beg your pardon for in- 
serting here a short address to a Republi- 
can Convention when I was aspiring to the 
office of County Clerk for the second term. 
The chairman having instructed the secre- 
tary of the convention to cast the entire 
vote of the delegation for myself, I ad- 
dressed the convention as follows: 

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the Con- 
vention: Accept my profound thanks for 
the splendid manifestation of honor that 
you have conferred upon an humble indivi- 
dual like myself. I wish to impress upon 
you the political principles I outlined to 
you briefly two years ago, are the same to- 



Treading the Narrow Way 159 

day as they were then. I would rather be 
defeated honorably, squarely and honestly 
than to be successful with a tarnished char- 
acter obtained through disreputable meth- 
ods. I realize, as do all intelligent reason- 
ers witholding myself to be the humblest 
among you, that character is something 
that is not acquired while we sleep. It is a 
constant every day struggle, a life-long bat- 
tle. Take away our character and what 
have we left. 

I desire to say to you gentlemen that dur- 
ing my lifetime I have been intimately ac- 
quainted with labor in its most aggressive 
form. I know what it is to stand between 
two shining bands of steel under a scroching 
July sun. I know what it is to stack hay un- 
der a sultry and oppressive heat. I know the 
loneliness and privations that comes to one 



i6o Treading the Narrow Way 

who has tended stock in the heart of the 
Rocky Mountains. I fully realize that these 
different pursuits require grit and determina- 
tion, they are the hardest kind of labors, but 
I can say to you in all candor that I have 
never worked harder in my life than in the 
past two years endeavoring to serve the citi- 
zens of this county in the capacity of clerk. 

If I have been competent, if I have been 
faithful, if I have done my duty, that is not 
for me to decide. You are the judges of these 
conditions, if you think I have, then I ask 
for your support and influence. You are a 
body of men from all parts of this county ; if 
each one of you will work for the best inter- 
ests of the party I see no reason why we 
should not be successful at the polls. The 
campaign this year is short ; I wish to say for 
myself that I will not be able to get around 



Treading the Narrow IV ay i6i 

much. The duties of my office for the past 
six weeks have been very strenuous and will 
continue so to be for some time to come. The 
state board of equalization were late in send- 
ing their report and not only being late, but 
were unkind, and raised the valuation on sev- 
eral of our taxable properties and this makes 
extra work for the clerk, so I trust you will 
be like the turkey in the tall tree and keep one 
eye open for the boy from Lodge Pole. 

There has happened in my short career as 
an American citizen a good many things that 
I have felt elated over and proud of. I am 
proud that I am an American citizen, born 
under the stars and stripes and belong to a 
nation second to none. I am proud I was 
born in a state whose brow is bathed by the 
mighty Missouri and upon whose bosom flour- 
ishes the most productive crop of the union. 



i62 Treading the Narrow Way 

But if there is one thing that I am prouder of 
more than any other, it is the fact that I be- 
long to a party whose motto is principle and 
good government, and whose loftiest aim has 
always been to make America the ideal nation 
of the world. I thank you. 

I will here relate an incident that happened 
when I first encountered experience in her 
knee breeches, I have termed it a fighting, ex- 
plosive nauseating cough remedy. I would 
prefer calling it an egg nogg ; but there is one 
extra ingredient that disfranchises the egg 
and in a peculiar way leaves the nogg there 
in a somewhat embarrassing condition. 

When I was a youth, I had some peculiar 
traits in my makeup. My main instruction 
was received from that old professor, experi- 
ence, and day by day I gained some valuable 
knowledge in the school of hard knocks. Be- 



Treading the Narrozv Way 163 

ing of a peculiar turn of mind I had implicit 
truth and confidence in all mankind, and on 
account of this trait I have often met with 
misplaced confidence. 

For instance, the "Bonuses" and ''Good 
Wills** heretofore realted. I had contracted a 
bad cold of tenacious irritability down near 
the little hamlet of Paxton, Nebraska, while 
performing the menial labor of an every day 
workman on the renowned line of the Union 
Pacific. The work being accomplished was 
known as bucking steel. Through climatic 
conditions of contraction and expansion the 
rails on one side had gained from nine to 
twelve feet over the rails in the other side. 
The side that was ahead was being pulled 
back to the point opposite the other by a loco- 
motive attached to a large cable. Some said 
this strategic work swelled the premium of 



164 Treading the Narrow Way 

the water soaked stock ; but this contention is 
left to philosophers and those who study eco- 
nomic problems, as to whether or not the cor- 
poration was ahead rails at Omaha or short at 
Ogden. 

The days were exceedingly warm, it being 
in the autumn of the year. I lost more per- 
spiration than was due me and along toward 
evening, when old sol was getting ready to 
retire and also largely due to a scant ward- 
robe, a chilliness would steal over my spare 
physique. The ride home from the work in 
the evening, on flat cars, at a hurried speed, 
caused the night air to condense in the locality 
of the throat. Nature not doing her part, I 
tried to assist her in removing the obstruction 
and, as soon as the speed of the train would 
allow, I shot from the car in a mad race for 
the boarding house. Being sure footed and 



Treading the Narrow Way 165 

fleet, I was generally first at the wash basin, 
erasing from my countenance Nebraska's pro- 
ductive soil and leaving what the water didn't 
loosen on the old fashioned long rolling board- 
ing house towel. These repeated conditions 
day after day commenced to tell and the 
slight cold became a hacking cough that em- 
braced more forcibly than a Dutch lassie 
reared on eastern corn. 

After the work was completed, the men 
were returned to the various localities. Upon 
arriving safely at my destination, I went to 
the home physician. "Doc" when not incar- 
cerated in the county bastile for dispensing a 
compound familiarly known as whiskey but 
better known to home residents as hades 
corked up in a bottle, prescribed, from his oft 
water stock. (I pause for a scalding sensa- 
tion felt on my cheeks.) Poor Old "Doc" is 
sleeping beneath the sod. 



1 66 Treading the Narrow Way 

Constant concoctions bringing no relief, I 
was at last listening to a well meant prescrip- 
tion from my co-laborer Dick. He said his 
remedy would give unwavering satisfaction to 
ailments like mine. I don't think his remedy 
would stand the pure food law test ; but when 
you get to clutching you'll clutch anything. So 
I listened to the unlearned pharmacist and 
keenly assented and he started to compound 
two well known ingredients in equal parts. 
One ingredient was controlled by that mag- 
netic dollar chaser, John D., and the other 
was controlled by nobody, it did the control- 
ing, i. e., oil and whiskey. I'd cover up this 
last ingredient and give it a better concealed 
classical standing but ignorance is bliss and 
there you are. This carefully prepared drink, 
my friend said, should be taken five minutes 
before breakfast. So according to directions 



Treading the Narrozv Way iS*/ 

I hoisted the tin cup and down went the fluids. 
Just enough oil in it to make it slip quick, and 
you had it before you really knew it. 

It is now twenty-three years since I swal- 
lowed that conglomeration and I can't hardly 
pass a home one-gallon kerosene can full or 
empty without a keen desire to kick the bot- 
tom out of it, but you have to be careful witJi 
other people^s property, whether it's mort- 
gaged or not. No matter how keen or fertile 
your imagination may be you can't realize a 
dose of this character unless you taste it. 
Take the minutest equal parts of each, mix 
them, drink them and be convinced. Was I 
sick? Of all the great guns of all our wars, 
Civil or uncivil, I will take my oath before 
any judge of common jurisdiction, sitting as 
a court of record and say I WAS. 

The only recollection I have of the break- 



1 68 Treading the Narrow Way 

fast menu was the two hard boiled eggs and a 
faint remembrance, as I was leaving the table, 
of a fruit picture on the wall tipping up and 
down. That was the first time I ever saw 
anything inanimate acting so. Mercy, the 
taste of that oil and the remembrance of it, 
mixing in a place the size of your fist ! Think 
of that rip-roaring, sizzling tobacco flavored, 
ingredient, trying to slip one over on that 
kerosene and knock out those two hard-boiled, 
well matured, boarding-house eggs. I say in 
all candor, I don't blame John D. for water- 
ing the oil. Water it more, John, it will be 
milder to take. I went through the oil belt 
in Indiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and all the rest, 
I visited all the stills, illicit, and otherwise of 
Kentucky, Tennessee, and Colorado; and as 
soon as brother Pat could get me to my room 
and my head out of the window I hoisted the 



Treading the Narrow Way 169 

hottest fluids and food stuffs ever contained 
in the stomach of man or beast. I have always 
felt sorry for those eggs on account of their 
age. 

I must take a short glimpse here of a 
peculiar incident that transpired under my 
roof between two men of the cloth. One 
was a M. E. minister and the other a seven 
day advent. The advent had been staying in 
town for several weeks and I became fairly 
well acquainted with him and his estimable 
wife, and he asked me if they might have a 
few meetings at our home in the evenings, 
and I said certainly and he came. Both he 
and his wife were scholars, well cultured and 
refined and we enjoyed listening to their ver- 
sion of the scriptures. How the M. E. min- 
ister came to be there one evening is still a 
mystery to me, but I think some one of his 



170 Treadmg the Narrow Way 

parishioners must have told him that Satan 
had entered our home and he had better in- 
tervene and see if he couldn't extricate us 
from the wary gentleman's clutches. 

The evening entertainment was progress- 
ing nicely and the advent man was in charge 
of the machinery, when suddenly the M. E. 
man took issue with him over his version of 
one of the scriptural passages and quick wit 
and repartee was fast and furious. The ad- 
vent was the superior in scriptural knowledge 
and the way he got the other fellow in the 
meshes and so completely tangled him up is 
an event that can never be erased from my 
memory. The M. E. man was nonplussed, red 
of face and angry; and so ungentlemanly as 
to let all the fireworks in his dignified Sunday 
nature explode and told the cool, calm ad- 
vent that teachings of his kind should be in 



Treading the Narrow Way 171 

hell. You may lay this excitement to anger, 
being worsted, or anything you like, but I 
think the gentleman he came to remove from 
our home entered him one hundred per cent 
strong. Why he was on his feet with his 
Methodist fists clenched, ready to fight, and 
if it hadn't been for the soothing, pacifying 
utterances of his good wife saying, "John," 
"John," I don't know what would have hap- 
pened. The other fellow laughed at him and 
I really think if the worst had occurred he 
would have given the angry man a fuller 
meaning of the Bible and turned the other 
cheek. 

I think if an Advent says Saturday is the 
Lord's day and should be observed on the 
Sabbath, the Methodist says Sunday is the 
day, and some other denomination says Fri- 
day is the day, I'm willing to be convinced. It 



1/2 Treading the Narrow Way 

beats having the Fourth of July come on 
Saturday, and if I had enough money so I 
needn't work I'd say let seven different de- 
nominations have seven different days, and 
no matter which home I observed I wouldn't 
be left out shivering in an undershirt. Some- 
thing peculiar about church denominations, 
all of them headed for the same place, but 
each one anxious to route you. One tells you 
they have the old travelled road, founded on 
the Bible, another a different way, founded on 
the Bible, and others another different way, 
also founded on the Bible. I conclude the 
best and surest way is to be a Christian and 
read the Bible, live it and let God show the 
way. Sunday churches or Saturday churches 
carry no guarantee that you'll reach Heaven. 

Before I invested in *'Good-wills" and 
"Bonuses" and other losing investments, I 



Treading the Narrow Way 173 

would occasionally take my family for a little 
trip on the Los Angeles limited and rub 
against the aristocracy and the diamonds. 
Years before when I was a day laborer on 
the same road over which this elegant train 
glides, I thought to travel on such a goddess 
of beauty was a luxury only for wealth and 
culture, and a pleasure unequaled, but hope 
beats eternal in the human breast and as I had 
lived largely on hope for over thirty years, I 
finally said hope can go to blazes, the oppor- 
tunity is here and why not embrace it. 

Well, it is certainly a big taste of wealth 
and affluence to settle in cushions a foot deep 
with all the wrinkles eradicated for once in 
a lifetime by a well filled stomach of the 
choicest viands in the culinary art. And oh 
the lofty thoughts as you settle down in the 
deep upholstery and listen to the clicking of 



174 Treading the Narrow Way 

the rails as you speed away on this overland 
beauty. There is a peculiar feeling under 
your vest as you notice the well groomed 
man, the well groomed woman, the sparkle of 
the electric lights and the glitter of the dia- 
monds. Elegance everywhere. The very 
height of ingenuity. Then when you enter 
the dining car with its rosewood finish, tas- 
tily decorated tables, superb linen, and cast 
your eye over the choice menu and have the 
black gentry all attention and ready to care 
for your smallest want, you may feel as I 
did, pretty classy company for a boy from 
Lodge Pole. Of ocurse there are snubs here 
and there, you find them everywhere. They 
are in a class that is well known for nineteen 
hundred years. They took the leading part 
in the crucifixion of the Nazarene. We can't 
exist without having them, and if you will 



Treading the Narrow Way 175 

notice in any walk of life, there is a pain for 
nearly every pleasure, with corns and bunions 
thrown in. 

As a hunter I never received any distinc- 
tion and am forced to admit as such I am an 
entire nonentity and failure. My father 
owned a rifle which was the only one of its 
kind in our community for years and years. 
Its early history I am unfamiliar with and 
never learned it. It was in his possession 
when I was born and I suppose it was the 
g^n he carried on the hand car for protec- 
tion when the Indians were numerous in the 
latter sixties. At some time it received a 
broken stock and ever after its being repaired 
it was known as old splice. For many years 
when the old year died and the new year was 
born, old splice spoke forth at its birth and 
its missile of death generally lodged in the 
tail of the railroad wind mill. 



176 Treading the Narrow Way 

Old splice was the type of one hundred 
years ago, when people weren't killed as 
quickly as today, the loading was slow and 
gave one chance to escape; I remember 
brother Pat used it to shoot a dog that he 
had tied up with a rope. He took steady aim, 
pulled the old fashioned hammer and fired. 
When the smoke cleared away the dog was 
running with the fullest capacity of its limbs. 
The ball had cut the rope. 

I never shot old splice but once and I'll al- 
ways remember the incident. A chicken 
hawk had been tormenting the poultry for a 
long time and I got bold and reckless one day, 
grabbed old splice (some one had been kind 
enough to leave it loaded) and sallied forth 
bent on destruction. The hawk was soaring 
high in the air but didn't seem to want to 
descend any. Old splice was supposed to 



Treading the Narrozv Way 177 

carry half a mile and as I knew this was not 
the distance from the gun to the hawk, I con- 
cluded to test out old splice and see if the 
prowess of the old fellow had been exag- 
gerated. I had heard some one say you must 
get down on one knee, as an attitude of re- 
spect, I presume, and hold the stock solidly 
and lovingly against the shoulder. I did 
both of these things and fired. I felt my 
head strike the ground so amazingly quick 
and hard that it confused and startled me. I 
knew I was committing no crime and couldn't 
account for such harsh treatment. At first I 
thought the bird might have struck me in the 
face and, it coming from such a height, would 
cause a terrible compact when one body met 
another, but I abandoned this idea, as no 
hawk was anywhere above or below. Then 
I thought I might have torn some planet loose. 



178 Treading the Narrow Way 

but this was an asylum idea also. Then I 
thought some one may have overfed old 
splice and made him bilious. I afterwards 
learned this was true. The miscreant still 
lives. 



HOPES THAT EXPLODED. 

M M "M 

If it wasn't for the word hope this would 
be a dreary world for the fellow who plans 
and builds in the future. It rises and falls in 
every human breast. Some have an over 
abundance, and others lack in not having 
enough. It arouses buoyancy and encourage- 
ment to see one who reaches toward hope and 
almost succeeds but doesn't get quite a firm 
enough grip to fasten the goal securely before 
he has to let go ; but no matter how hard the 
fall, or how often, he's up and trying again. 
Discouragement or complete failure never 
causes a faltering step or gets time to fester 
with despondency before keener activity re- 
vives the energy and the shattered hope is 



i8o Treading the Narrow Way 

rehabilitated and again swells the breast so 
full there is nothing to do but try .again 
Bless the hopeful man or woman. Some can't 
stand the fall, they go down clear to the bot- 
tom. Defeat and despondency chain them 
fast. 

In the year 1896 when Bryan was prepar- 
ing his famous oration "The Crown of Gold" 
that was so ably delivered and well received 
and which was the leading factor in opening 
up the road for him to the White House, I 
commenced scheming and planning on patent- 
able ideas. Nineteen years of hard thinking 
has brought no visible financial returns and 
so far the patent attorney is the only one who 
has received toll. I never entered the field 
thinking I had any latent ingenuity like Edi- 
son, Westinghouse, Ford and many others; 
but I had hopes, as long as I could pay the 



Treading the Narrozv Way i8i 

attorney and the filing fee of the patent office. 
My first application for a patent was an 
adjustable track wrench that met complete 
failure after a year's pendency. I thought I 
had a good, practical, economical, and conven- 
ient wrench, but after the said period of time 
elapsed my attorney informed me it was re- 
jected by the chief examiner on account of 
prior similar claims already patented. Of 
course you must not get confused and won- 
der why he didn't tell me this before I filed 
the application. If he had the self-explana- 
tory portion of the scheme loses its self re- 
spect and puts the attorney in a bad financial 
light, which I would dislike to do. However, 
the discouraging news was so cool and sad- 
dening at this first attempt that it froze my 
ingenuity a decade and a quarter, and then 
hope rose again and I called once more on 



i82 Treading the Narrow Way 

the dormant faculty and changed attorneys. 
After due diligence had persevered and I 
had stood the condemnation of my wife, who 
said I was getting absent-minded and hard of 
hearing, I sent in my application duly wit- 
nessed and sworn to, along with the neces- 
sary stipend that makes the wheels buzz in 
the attorney's head and swells that seven mil- 
lions of profit accrued in the patent office 
from a good many fellows like myself. Nice 
to help swell this big profit for some day 
when this accumulation becomes large enough 
our wise custodians of this fund may transfer 
it like ordinary Town Council men do when 
one fund gets too far ahead and pay off the 
national debt. My second application was an 
improved index and a device of meritable 
convenience over present ones, so I thought. 
It has been pending two years after failing 



Treading the Narrow Way 183 

ten times before the chief examiner, who 
doesn't seem to have the courtesy to allow it. 

While the invention was safe and secure in 
the government vault, I was rash enough to 
go into another irrational period and get out 
a computing device for the busy coal man to 
aid him in rapid accurate calculations and do 
away with the old time method of having 
coal swell so sixteen hundred pounds was a 
ton; not really a long ton but a short ton. 
This wonderful invention hatched in the 
brain of an ordinary man, lingered in Wash- 
ington one year and a half, and was then re- 
jected. I wouldn't care for having it re- 
jected, but rd like to have the rejectors use a 
milder word, one that doesn't rankle so much 
and stir up the mean things in you. 

Well, here are two great inventions for the 
betterment of the race denied, and from the 



184 Treading the Narrow Way 

way the attorney wrote in his last tribute of 
love to me, the third is hanging over the prec- 
ipice and is ready to fall among its ancestors. 
I had hopes when I invested in the last 
two ideas, my total expenditures, including 
postage on a voluminous amount of corre- 
spondence, was $141.28, and this is how I 
disbursed the interest on that amount: — I 
calculated conservatively that the two inven- 
tions would net me $50,000. Here she goes! 
To my father-in-law, for giving away his 
daughter to me, for which I have never paid, 
$1,000.00; to two sisters-in-law that favored 
my suit, $1,000. each; to a brother-in-law that 
did the square thing by me, $1,000.00; to my 
oldest brother, who continually hammered me 
when I was young and smaller than he, $1,- 
000.00; to a younger brother, whom I could 
hammer, $1,000.00; to my four sisters, 



Treading the Narrow Way 185 

$1,000.00 each. Ten thousand of the iron men 
at work. The next $20,000 I put at interest 
in Colorado, where it is easy to get a ten per 
cent rate. This would bring me in $2,000.00 
a year to live on, and by being frugal I 
might be able to smoke a five cent cigar occa- 
sionally and let the corn cob pipe have a 
chance to dry up some of its nicotine. The 
next $10,000 went to old people who have 
nearly reached the summit of their lives, but 
on account of the feebleness of their limbs, 
poor eyesight and a meagre pocketbook, the 
final ascent overtaxes their small reserve of 
strength and with want and sacrifice being in 
the majority they can't quite make it. To 
these aged and needy people I would give 
$500.00 cash. This amount would render their 
last days comfortable, free from worry and 
care. That helps twenty old couples, forty 



1 86 Treading the Narrow Way 

people that are worthy and needy. The re- 
maining $10,000 goes from my pocket in 
ready cash to people met every day, people 
whose countenances have rigidly printed 
thereon a silent appeal for sympathy and 
help. A meal to the man suffering from the 
pangs of hunger; $50.00 to a woman making 
her living over a washboard and fighting a 
losing fight against poverty to rear her brood ; 
$100.00 for a present and a Christmas tree to 
poor little children who never have the pleas- 
ure of unwrapping a doll or any kind of a 
toy; $5.00 to a laboring man looking for 
work; $10.00 on a subscription list to help a 
poor widow bury her boy ; $25.00 to the man 
in the pulpit preaching straight from the 
shoulder; $10.00 for a railroad ticket to take 
a girl home who expected work in the city 
but didn't find it. And so goes the remaining 



Treading the Narrow Way 187 

$10,000, here a little and there a little. I think 
I could gladden more hearts with this last 
$10,000 than the great man who spent mil- 
lions in libraries and free reading rooms 
throughout the country. With all due respect 
to him, the man in overalls and the girl who 
must work are the ones who need literature 
the worst, but the struggle for existence is so 
keen they haven't time to read books and they 
feel humiliated and unwelcome in their every- 
day garb mingling with the better dressed 
people. The well-groomed man and woman of 
today, in a large sense, doesn't apply any too 
closely the ethics of the Galilean and would 
rather not mingle with the less fortunate peo- 
ple, so the conclusive thesis is there is no 
congeniality between the two and the primary 
object of helping the fellow who needed it 
most is a failure. But alas, the $50,000 is 



1 88 Treading the Narrow Way 

still behind the capitalist and must wait for 
hope to rise again. 

Not feeling satisfied but that there was 
plenty of loose coin waiting to flow to me, I 
took up the pleasant but unprofitable part avo- 
cation of composing songs. I had a Wash- 
ington music firm write the music, copyright 
the songs in my name, do the advertising, and 
remit one-half the proceeds to me semi-an- 
nually January 31st and July 31st. I was 
very careful to set out specifically the remit- 
ting part in our contract. Each song had its 
own peculiarity and sentiment to touch the 
public pulse, which so far has been untouch- 
able. The first song, "A Tear Drop Always 
Glistened in His Eye,'* was to fasten itself on 
the hearts of the people like "Annie Laurie." 
"When the Silver Moon Light Sparkles on 
the Lake" made its bow to the public; I 



Treading the Narrow Way 189 

hoped lovers with emotion would go wild over 
it and would know a good thing when they 
heard it. If they had such a feeling the emol- 
uments failed to show it. The third song, 
"Anna, My Anna," was short and jerky for 
the happy-go-lucky class of people that fell 
so in love with "Casey Jones." But it seems 
this class wouldn't respond either, and leaves 
me with the entire stock on hand with an ex- 
penditure of $90.00 trying to get the people 
to sing. I find them more unresponsive than 
the preacher when he says let everybody sing, 
and a few who gave their best years in the 
Lord's service Hft up their cracked voices in 
earnest endeavor to lead the sheep, and the 
sheep, lambs and all go astray. My share of 
the profits has been ten one cent postage 
stamps, just the ordinary kind, the common 
kind you can get from every postoifice in the 



190 Treading the Narrow Way 

country. And the trio which failed to re- 
ceive public recognition I laid away where 
moths and rust doth not decrease their earn- 
ing power and neither do thieves molest them. 
Three more hopes decently but sadly buried. 
There is also intertwined and resting 
sweetly in slumberland 175 shares of Cracker 
Engle Gold Mine Stock at twenty cents per 
share and twelve years accrued interest. I 
had the customary notice before I bought that 
the stock would advance rapidly in price and 
if I invested without hesitation and without 
investigation I would have the benefit of the 
first and early advance. I hearkened to the 
alluring honey literature and sent a U. S. 
money order, something whose face value 
couldn't be questioned. I wanted to be abso- 
lutely sure rd get the stock. I got it all right. 
I have such faith in that stock that I can go 



Treading the Narrow Way 191 

anywhere and leave it behind unlocked doors 
and it never strays away. 

A home boy succeeded in getting a patent 
on an improved table. He incorporated under 
the laws where Wilson was governor and 
then invited capital for manufacturing pur- 
poses. He styled his invention **The Great 
Western Improvement Company'* and sold 
seventeen shares at the flat sum of $5.00. I 
learned a little from the crack at the Cracker 
Eagle and did not fly so high and only took 
the $5.00 worth. It's comical now, to me, how 
the inventor and promoter explained how his 
table was superior to the common ordinary 
everyday table that's been in use so long. It 
had a hollow holding receptacle in the center 
and he said after the meal had been stowed 
away and nothing was left but the dishes and 
flies, the housewife could, if she felt so dis- 



192 Treading the Narrow Way 

posed, elevate a handle and the soiled dishes 
would disappear and the table would have an 
inviting appearance. He said it was espe- 
cially fine when conversation had been brisk 
and company or peddlers were seen coming; 
all that was necessary was the quick jerk of 
the ever-ready handle and down out of sight 
went the dishes, flies, napkins, and every- 
thing untidy and untasty. I was looking for 
votes when this investment was made and 
while the votes may not have had an equal 
value I let it go at that and put away the 
stock for my grandchildren. Another share 
of stock in the Campbells' Farming Associa- 
tion at a cost of $5.00 brings my get rich 
quick investments to a finis. The only other 
stock I ever had was bank stock. I invested 
$1,500.00 in a State Bank in Nebraska. I 
didn't lose on this deal but the money would 



Treading the Narrozu Way 193 

have paid better on a straight five per cent, 
rate. 

Nothing would have done me more good 
and brought a keener satisfaction than to 
have had a nice remuneration from some in- 
vestment that I have made. My wife called 
me what the bible says she shouldn't so many 
times that it seems to look like I am really 
a bigger one than she said I was, and if I 
could have changed her mind by laying be- 
fore her eyes a nice portly check for $5,cx)0.oo 
or $10,000.00 it would have been such an 
agreeable surprise not only to her but to my- 
self that we both would have enjoyed it, and 
especially myself if I could have pulled it 
over. But if hope don't come again I will 
have to let that excellent pleasure be like 
Mathewson's speedy one and fade away. 

A lad of the average type at twenty-one has 



194 Treading the Narrow Way 

a great deal of stored up energy; he has the 
muscle bank and the brain bank from which 
to get his necessary resources, and a great 
many lads think Dad is a back number 
and he sees where the old gentleman was 
short on gray matter, and all advice is lost 
on this sort of boys. I was never conceited 
this way, in fact I think somebody else got 
nearly all the gall that should have been 
mine. If a fellow holds his own in these 
days, no matter what party is in power, Dem- 
ocratic or Republican, you need your full al- 
lowance of gall. The lad that thinks that 
the governor's gray matter is not as profuse 
as it should be, but he, through some unknown 
force, grabbed all that was coming to him 
and part of dad's might read the following 
verse and the conclusive portion of this 



Treading the Narrow Way 195 

chapter and apply it from a stand point of 
ordinary horse sense: 

When Johnnie Jones was twenty-one 
He said my farming life is done, 
I'll pack my duds and say Good Bye 
And to the city I will hie. 
I'll show the ones who think they're it 
That Johnnie Jones has got the grit 
To make a name that will be felt 
Like Astor, Gould or Roosevelt. 

It makes the pain come home when you 
look back from fifty and realize that a man 
at twenty-one is a darn big fool, at thirty 
still a fool, at thirty-five a little foolish, and 
at forty he still has some, at forty-five wis- 
dom breaks in gently, and at fifty he stands 
on the threshold of learning ready to apply 
and absorb, and at sixty he's a valuable asset 
to his community and country. 



THE WEABY TRAVELER. 



Something has been gained and our life 
has not been futile if we can say we owe no 
man and there is no obligation through which 
we have passed, financial or otherwise, of 
which we are ashamed. We may not have 
acquired honor, wealth or position but if we 
have lived up to the teachings of the plumb 
and the square, we have a record that will 
stand the closest investigation when we knock 
for entrance at the pearly gates. If we can 
stand with our whole soul bared before our 
maker and he sees that chastity and the sweet 
purity of any girl or woman has never been 
trespassed upon we have acquired soemthing 
that brings smiles to angels' faces. If we 



Treading the Narrozi} Way 197 

have stood firm when temptations surged and 
tossed and clamored and we met them and 
conquered, we have through our moral force 
a better right to the precious gems of God's 

kingdom than those saved in the eleventh 
hour. If we have never repeated unwhole- 
some stories or spoken slightingly of another's 
character or said disrespectfully something 
that we knew untrue, then we have lived well. 
Each day's battles must be fought alone and 
leave tomorrow's till they come. Never tear 
down character, it is the choicest gift in the 
universe and constitutes life's work. Remem- 
ber a pure woman or a pure man is the noblest 
work of God. Don't let your footsteps slip 
from the path of virtue but plant them firm 
and deep in the path of righteousness. Keep 
away from people whose thoughts are de- 
grading, and never harbor foul and indecent 



198 Treading the Narrow Way 

language. Make it your most earnest desire 
to avoid using profanity and vile utterances, 
an immoral epithet has a clinging effect which 
takes years to erase, and those that emulate 
and make us better takes determination and 
purity. 

I am now approaching the half-century 
mark. I can look ahead a few years and see 
the fiftieth mile post. In all the years that 
have past and gone I can recall none where 
my conditions and prospects are so alarming, 
serious and discouraging as at the present 
time. I have a peculiar ailment in my left 
side that has baffled the medical fraternity 
and caused extreme anxiety to myself. I 
have endeavored with courage and determina- 
tion to exterminate it. I have tried assidu- 
ously physical culture, osteopathy, dietics, 
christian science and medicine. I have con- 



Treading the Narrow Way 199 

suited freely and often the great physician 
and all so far have failed. With treatment 
at Hot Springs thrown in as good meas- 
ure. The surgeons say an operation is 
the only hope through which they can dis- 
cover the cause and eliminate it. I dread 
operations like I do "Good Wills'' and 
"Bonuses." My wife had one and the doctor 
in charge said she would be a well woman in 
three weeks, but those three weeks were 
worse than that two weeks' loan. They 
stretched into six long, bitter years and were 
the direct cause of an outlay of money in ex- 
cess of three thousand dollars. Glad again 
of the early use of that harrow, for there was 
surely a gross violation of the truth on the 
part of the surgeon. On account of dearie's 
precarious health I was forced to try a lower 
altitude, and this not being sufficient it was 



200 Treading the Narrow Way 

necessary to try the balmy, sunny air of Cali- 
fornia and sojourn there among the orange 
blossoms and the singing birds for seven long 
months. This caused me to give up my posi- 
tion of clerk that netted me in my four years' 
labor the tidy sum of ten thousand dollars. 

Today as I stand looking at that fiftieth 
mile post I realize in the vernacular of the 
day "I am up against it." My money is gone, 
my ailment bothers me, I have a family to 
provide for, and the wolf stands on the 
threshold with his mouth open and his long, 
gaunt body in readiness to make the jump. 
In some way I must appease five empty 
stomachs from consuming five back bones. 
My investments were bad. I tied up thirty- 
five hundred dollars in a partnership lumber 
business, fifteen hundred dollars in a home 
to shelter my loved ones, and the rest went 



Treading the Narrow Way 201 

for food and clothing. I struck a highly 
modem town with all the up-to-date con- 
veniences, property depreciated fifty per cent., 
business was stagnant, interest kept gnawing, 
and taxes went skyward. The two sad mis- 
takes I made was: first, to visit the office of 
the County Treasurer and learn about the 
taxes; and the second was to stay out of 
business unless we had enough money to pay 
for it and keep to the leeward of that ten 
per cent, interest, but I didn't and so much 
more for experience, the grandma of teachers. 

I do not lack courage and determination 
but knowing and being able to see that fiftieth 
mile post causes a shudder and slight touches 
of despondency. I think my training is more 
than is alloted the average man. I have been 
a day laborer on the farm, railroad and hay 
field. I have worked for a large number of 



202 Treading the Narrow Way 

task masters and I failed to remember when 
I was ever criticised for not keeping up my 
end. I have held a good many positions of 
trust such as census enumerator, section fore- 
man, extra gang foreman, county clerk, clerk 
of the district court, abstractor, town trustee, 
and member of the school board. 

The first time I was a candidate for county 
clerk I ran on the Republican ticket. I am 
not telling this in any spirit of the braggart 
but as a sample of confidence. In my old 
home precinct I received one hundred and 
twenty votes out of one hundred and thirty- 
two, and in the precinct where I worked as 
section foreman I received forty votes out of 
forty-eight, and this had always been a strong 
Democratic precinct. My opponent was a 
strong candidate and entirely familiar with 
political tactics, an old scholar in the school. 



Treading the Narrow Way 203 

But when the votes were counted I received 
the certificate of election and laid down the 
tamping bar and took up the pen. I could 
have established a precedent and been elected 
again but dearie's health would not permit 
and I declined to run. 

Some say the hand of fate guides our des- 
tinies and it was so to be, but I am at a loss 
to understand why it should so be. I have 
lived clean, I have always met my obligations 
with the strictest honor, no marks of dissipa- 
tion, inwardly or otherwise, have scarred my 
form and thank God he nor any other can 
find any danger signals that can isolate me 
from a free transport to the narrow path. I 
have been economical, conservative and kind 
and I think I have done my very best. I have 
treated every one with the closest application 
that can be unravelled from the ten command- 



204 Treading the Narrow Way 

ments and the additional commandment es- 
tablished through Christ. 

All through my married life I have been 
attentive to my wife and in any room of our 
mortgaged home you can see many tokens of 
affection that she has received. I have en- 
deavored to lighten her domestic burden and 
almost every Monday morning for the past 
twelve years I have been the propeller at the 
washing machine. Hundred of times I have 
arisen between the hours of three and four 
and wended my way to the family kitchen 
and waded in on the soiled linen. I never 
sneaked out the back way to avoid using the 
tea towel on waiting dishes. I can use the 
broom, duster and make the beds. I can 
scrub, polish the stove, cook the steak, and 
perform almost the entire category of do- 
mestic needs; but when it comes to baking I 



Treading the Narrow Way 205 

would rather face the cannon's mouth (a 
silent one like in the city park in Denver) and 
die like a martyr. I have often acted as maid. 
I recall once when I was a maid my wife was 
bed fast for three weeks. We lived in a 
strong church town, some where near eighty 
per cent., it seemed nearly all were Christians 
but during dearie's sickness there was not a 
single Christian woman or suffragist came to 
see her, offered her services, or was in any 
way interested. I am sorry this happened in 
this broad land of boasted Christianity and 
civilization. Some of these same Christian 
ladies never failed to appear when the dues 
for foreign missions were bordering on de- 
linquency or when some rations were needed 
for a church spread. 

I believe in doing good and giving cheer. 
You can always notice a gleam of pleasure in 



2o6 Treading the Narrow Way 

your wife's face when you give her a box of 
candy, a dress, a dish, or some little token, 
aiid how she clings to the missiles of love 
that you may have penned on scraps of paper, 
chunks of wood and other things. They al- 
ways speak for something I think meritable. 
I think the pathway of dearie can be made 
more cheerful if she is remembered daily and 
not all in one chunk at Christmas time, and 
then let her wait for another twelve months. 
I never feared I would kiss my wife too 
much. I kiss her more now than when I 
courted her and they are just as sweet as 
ever. It helps to keep the love light in her 
eye. 

I have three fine children. I am not con- 
ceited about them; other people say they are 
good. I have done my best to raise them 
well. Two of them are in the County High 



Treading the Narrow Way 2(yj 

School, the eldest a girl of sweet sixteen and 
the other a noisy boy of fourteen. The re- 
maining one is a baby of two and one-half 
years. I must leave these three children and 
dearie and look for employment. You can 
realize how pleasant it is to be separated from 
them. How sad it is to kiss dearie and the 
others good bye and have the many cute say- 
ings of a strongly attached baby ringing in 
your ears, not only through the dreary, lone- 
some days but long after the shadows fall. 

Such is life with its pains and sorrows. 
They come to us all and while I may think 
my road is rougher than is alloted the ordinary 
individual I suppose others think the same. 
The one great consolation I have is that dearie 
is almost a strong, well woman, and that is 
worth all I have passed through and I would 
gladly undergo it again for her. I must be 



2o8 Treading the Narrow Way 

getting ready, the colonists reduced rates of 
our liberal hearted '*S-T-E-E-L" railroads is 
near the finis of the twelve-day limit. The 
parting is at hand. I kiss the loved ones 
good bye, cling tenaciously to my second- 
class ticket, guard well my pneumatic pocket 
book with its ragged puncture and try again 
in pretty California among the salty ocean 
breezes, the cheerful flowers, the fragrant 
orange blossoms and the shady pepper trees 
to find work and health for those I love. 
GOOD BYE. 



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